


the year that wasn't

by achilleees



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Groundhog Day, M/M, Mental Instability, Post-Canon, Recreational Drug Use, Scarification, Sibling Incest, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2019-12-30 03:30:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18307292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/achilleees/pseuds/achilleees
Summary: Diego turned to Five. “I’ve already, uh, lived today. This has already happened.”Everyone went still.“Ooh, that’s a mind-fuck,” said Klaus.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i don't even know if i like this fic, just that you can't write 18K of groundhogs day fic and NOT post it, you know?
> 
> TW: mentions of canon-typical child abuse. frank discussion of real-life tragedies that have taken place in the past. heed the tags, because diego engages in unhealthy coping mechanisms. wild vacillations between humor and angst.

They tumbled out of the portal and hit the ground in a heap. Diego was just glad they didn’t fall from the same distance Five did when he first came through; his knees couldn’t take the landing after years of crime-fighting, boxing and general reckless behavior.

Actually, these knees felt just fine. He looked at them critically, took in the rest of his body – then, with horror, touched his finger to his temple. No scar.

“Oh, god dammit,” said Five.

Diego must have been a minute behind, because everyone else was already staring around in shock, taking in the sight of all their siblings back in their younger forms, maybe 18 years old – Allison, before she’d dyed her hair. Vanya, with bangs. Luther, not a gorilla.

Five, still 13 years old, still hilarious.

“Oh, this is fantastic!” Klaus said, feeling his own face. “Except for the lack of facial hair. I worked hard for that facial hair. I smeared jizz on my face for that facial hair.”

“Please tell me you did not smear jizz on your face,” said Ben.

Ben.

“Everyone else can see Ben, right?” Diego said.

“Oh my god, Ben!” Allison yelped, leaping across the circle to hug him. “How –?” Diego closed his eyes for a moment. It was good to hear her voice again.

“The complexities of time compression are beyond my understanding,” Ben said, hugging her back. “Ask Five.”

Five scowled.

“Never mind, don’t ask Five,” said Ben. “Five doesn’t know.”

“The King of Time Travel doesn’t know how we got warped back to our 18-year-old selves?” said Klaus, smirking. “Ooh, that’s gotta sting.”

“I’m hardly the King of Time Travel, and I had a few too many distractions to put the proper thought into my calculations,” said Five. “I’ve never tried to bring passengers along with me before, there were – complications, I –”

“Long live the new King of Time Travel!” Klaus said, raising both hands. “I will be a fair and gracious ruler.”

“Hang on, why are you the new king?” Five protested. “You don’t know _anything_ about time travel.”

“ _Focus_ ,” Luther growled. “We need to decide what to do about Vanya.” She was still bundled in his arms, looking very small and incredibly harmless in that oversized white suit.

“What to do about her? How about not lock her in a dungeon, how about that’s what we _do_ about her,” Allison snapped.

“Yeah, that was a fucking terrible idea,” Klaus said. “I would say in retrospect, but it wasn’t in retrospect, because we were all telling you at the time _this is a fucking terrible idea_.”

“Okay, yes,” Luther said, looking wounded, “I realize that now, but –”

“What we do is beg for her forgiveness, tell her she has every right to be angry, and let her decide what punishment to dole out,” Allison said, a force of nature, a hurricane unto herself. “And you, in particular, will kneel at her fucking feet and promise to stop being such an overbearing _jerk_ and then we’ll see how she –”

“Children!”

They all froze.

It had been a long time since Diego had heard that voice.

 

They filed inside like a troop of naughty schoolchildren, shooting anxious looks back and forth.

Ben’s statue wasn’t outside. In retrospect, Diego should have realized what that meant. Ben was still alive, so they were all still living in the Academy – all of them except Five, whom Reginald had shot a thoughtful look at but not spoken to as he ushered them all inside.

“Now,” he said, once they were all lined up in front of him, Vanya still conked out in Luther’s arms, “which one of you is going to explain this situation to me?”

“We were in the future, Sir,” said Luther.

Diego glared at him. Fucking brown-noser.

“The future?”

Luther stared straight ahead. “Yes, Sir, we – were on a mission, and we encountered some… difficulty, and Five had to transport us back with his powers to bring us to safety.”

“Number Five?” said Reginald, rapping smartly on his desk. “Report.”

“No,” said Number Five.

They all froze.

“No?”

“I’ve lived too long and seen too much to be frightened of you anymore,” Five said, glaring up at him. “I will not be bullied by an insecure old man with no real power of his own.”

Diego had never seen Reginald’s face so pale before. “I will not be spoken to that way, Number Five.”

“What are you going to do about it?” Five said, stepping forward in the line, and somehow even though he had to crane his neck even further to look Reginald in the eye, he looked ten inches taller for it. “You couldn’t stop me from leaving last time. You couldn’t stop any of _them_ from leaving either.” He gestured behind himself at the line of them. “You die alone in this stupid empty museum because _you couldn’t do anything about it_. You couldn’t then and you can’t now.”

Reginald inhaled thinly.

“Now, if you don’t mind, I’m taking _my_ team and we’re going to figure out how to cancel the apocalypse,” Five said. He turned on his heel and walked out.

As one, they turned their heads to look after him. There was a long, expectant silence.

“Ha!” Klaus said, breaking first. “Peace out, hombre!” He jogged after Five.

“Have fun rotting in hell, you old bastard,” Ben said cheerily, following.

“Luther,” Allison said.

Luther meekly followed her out, carrying Vanya.

“This was, no joke, orgasmic,” Diego said, winking at Sir Reginald and following them.

 

Five had led them to his bedroom, where Luther laid out Vanya on the bed and the rest of them gathered on various pieces of furniture.

“Damn, Five,” Allison said, sounding impressed. “That was killer, have you been preparing that one?”

“Yeah, when did you get a chance to see Pacific Rim?” Klaus said.

“What?” said Five.

“You know, today we’re cancelling the apocalypse? At the end of our hope?” Klaus waved his arms. “You came up with that all on your own?”

“Edge,” Diego said.

“What?”

“At the edge of our hope.” Diego had watched that movie maybe 20 times.

“What? No.” Klaus furrowed his brow. “I’m sure –”

“At the edge of our hope, at the end of our time,” Diego said.

“Twenty bucks says you can’t do the whole thing,” Klaus said.

“Why would you make that bet?” Ben said, appalled. “He clearly knows it by heart.”

“Yeah, but I’m hoping he’ll do an Idris Elba impression and I’ll thusly come in my pants,” Klaus said, grinning.

“Guys, can we focus on the actual apocalypse we’re experiencing?” Allison said. “Instead of some dumb movie apocalypse?”

Diego, Klaus, and Ben all made identical noises of protest at the same time.

“Can you guys at least pretend to take this seriously?” said Luther, clearly irritated.

“I guess we just don’t see what we have to do with anything,” Klaus said, looking at Diego and Luther. “Five’s gonna jump us back to the future when he figures out how, we’re going to not lock Vanya in the torture chamber from Matilda, crisis averted, big party, everyone eats cake, I’ve put weed in the cake, we –”

“I don’t know if it’s that simple,” Five said, stroking his chin and starting to mark a series of incomprehensible equations on the wall.

“That’s your job to figure out, dumplin’, not mine,” Klaus said. “When you have a plan, feel free to update me, but I’ve put in my three cents.”

“Two cents,” said Luther.

“That was worth at least three cents,” Klaus said.

“Klaus is right, he’s actively making it worse, I’m actually getting further from solving this problem,” Five gritted out. “Everyone out. We’ll debrief tonight.”

“What about Vanya?” Luther said.

“What about Vanya?” Five said, just as Vanya stirred with a groan.

 

Allison had requested that Diego and Ben accompany her on Vanya duty. Diego agreed, because Luther wasn’t _entirely_ wrong, and Vanya was too dangerous to allow unaccompanied in wider society. He figured if worst came to worst, Ben would be useful to subdue Vanya, and then Allison could rumor Ben, and Diego could help with the police presence in the aftermath. His siblings were _terrible_ under interrogation, they all just fell apart completely.

They’d let Ben pick the restaurant, given he hadn’t eaten food in over a decade. Evidently there were a lot of new restaurants he’d wanted to try.

“Sushi,” Allison said. “It was all the rage in the mid 2000s, before ramen became the new sushi.”

“Which was already the new cupcakes,” Diego said.

“Yes,” Allison said, pleased.

Vanya groaned and put her head in her hands.

Ben happily ate a mouthful of sashimi, and then he froze. “Oh, it’s raw fish,” he said. “I’m eating raw fish.”

“Yeah, is that… weird for you?” Allison said, gaze darting to his midsection.

Ben laughed. “Only because I don’t like raw fish. What, you think they’re, like, relatives or something?”

“Death has changed you, bud,” Diego said, clapping his shoulder.

“They’ve got vegan options,” said Allison, checking over her shoulder.

“Yeah, just what everyone wants. Vegan raw fish,” said Diego.

Allison rolled her eyes.

“Are we going to talk about it?” Vanya said, in a miserable, small voice.

They sobered. “Do you… want to talk about it?” said Allison.

“Not really, but it’s even worse not to,” said Vanya. She rubbed her hands over her arms like she was warming herself. “I’m… really sorry.” Her eyes welled up immediately.

“So are we,” Allison said softly. “We provoked you –”

“But I’m the one who –”

“But we still shouldn’t have –”

“But you were only doing what –”

“Okay, clearly, there is blame to be distributed,” said Ben loudly. He’d pushed away his plate of sushi, and he was looking serious and thoughtful, just like he always had. It was amazing how easy it was to slot him right back into the empty space he’d left. “Can we use that guilt and transform it into something productive?”

They looked at each other.

“Like, say, not causing another apocalypse?” Ben said.

“I didn’t mean to cause the last one, I don’t know how…” Vanya said hesitantly.

“I think that’s what we’re here for,” Allison said. “Not riling you up, but talking you down. Every time you’ve snapped, you’ve been pushed into it. Maybe we should stop… pushing.”

Vanya bit her lip. “But what if it happens again?” she said. “Do you promise you’ll kill me next time?”

“No,” Allison said.

“But –”

“No, Vanya,” Allison said gently. “We won’t.”

Vanya took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said. “…Okay.”

 

Diego didn’t realize until they got back, but Allison had very intentionally distributed the groups the way she had. When they came back to the Academy, Luther was looking shell-shocked in the main room, sitting on the settee and staring at his hands.

Five and Klaus, Diego imagined, made a very effective good-cop, bad-cop team. Five was, after all, terrifying, and Klaus was so weird and irreverent that you were never sure what was going to come out of him. Bad-cop, surrealist-cop.

They’d put the fear of god into him about his chosen restraint tactic for Vanya, Diego was sure. _If you ever try anything like that again, I will personally put you down_ vs _If you ever try anything like that again, I’ll rub soup in your hair_.

“Where’s Dad?” Diego said, pausing in the doorway.

“Up in his office,” said Klaus from the wet bar. Diego jerked; he hadn’t realized he was there.

“You drinking?” he said, vaguely disappointed but not surprised.

“Mocktails, buddy,” Klaus said, wiggling a lime at him. “Delicious, liver-friendly mocktails.”

Diego smiled.

“How’d it go with the Antichrist?” Klaus said.

“I don’t know, you said he was up in his office,” Diego deadpanned, and Klaus laughed. “But she seems… good. Like she’s not going to destroy the world today.”

“The best we can hope for,” said Klaus. “I’ll drink to that.” He toasted with something fizzy.

“Yeah,” Diego said. “L’chaim, salut, cheers.”

Luther gave a weak smile.

 

Mom made them dinner that night. They all sat in their normal spots at the table, except for Reginald, whose seat stayed conspicuously empty. Diego got the feeling he was hiding out of embarrassment from being thoroughly dressed down by a 13-year-old.

“Any updates?” he asked Five.

“Not really,” Five said. “I can easily take all of us slingshotting around time and space, but ending up exactly where I mean to? It’s difficult.”

“Why do we need to go back at all?” Klaus said through a mouthful of potatoes, waving his butter knife.

Ben nodded. “Won’t the forward progression of time take care of that for us? Eventually we’ll come to the same point.”

Allison looked down.

Claire, Diego thought. Allison was the only one of them who had left something in the future worth going back to.

“Because your consciousnesses aren’t meant to be here,” Five said, like it should have been obvious. “Let me put it this way – in three years, there will be an earthquake in Haiti that will kill hundreds of thousands of people. In four years, the nuclear power plant in Fukushima will detonate. In five years, a gunman will walk into an elementary school and open fire, killing dozens of children. How many of you will be amenable to sitting back and watching these things happen without interference?”

Diego’s fingers went tight around his knife.

“Oh,” said Klaus in an unfamiliar voice, small and lost.

“And you will try to change history,” Five said, “and the Commission will find you, and they will kill you, and nothing will be different.” He sighed. “People are not meant to relive the past. I know that better than anyone.”

“So we’ll… go back to our own time,” said Luther.

“And just let those this happen?” Diego growled. “When we can do something to change it?”

“You can’t change it,” snapped Five. “Get that idea out of your head, because it isn’t happening and it never will.”

“But –”

“I am not letting you go on some bullshit suicide mission because you think you’re more powerful than you are,” Five said. “Do you understand me?”

Diego opened his mouth, and then he felt something nudge him under the table. He looked over.

Klaus was shaking his head, his eyes large and kind and sad. “Sometimes people die, Diego,” he said. “Sometimes the best you can do is honor their memories.”

Diego snarled wordlessly.

“You can’t save everyone,” Luther said.

Coming from the grand holy martyr himself, this was rich. “I can fucking try.”

“And kill your siblings in the process?” Five said. “When the Commission comes, they’re not going to stop at just you.”

“We have to go back,” Allison said.

“Fine,” Diego said, because he wasn’t going to win this fight. He stood up and stormed from the room.

“Diego?” Mom said, immediately following after him.

“I’m not hungry,” Diego said, heading up the stairs to his room. He shut the door and flopped onto his bed, folding his hands on his chest and glaring up at the ceiling.

Being back here, arguing with his family, hiding away in the one place in the Academy that had always been his alone… It was so easy to fall back into those old patterns. It felt like he’d never left.

 

Some time later, there was a knock on the door. “Not now, Klaus,” he said, because no one else would have bothered him when he was really worked up.

“It’s Vanya.”

Diego almost told her to fuck off, but then he stopped himself, thinking of those cold blue eyes, and of the way she’d beat her hands against the window of that little room. How he’d protested, but let Luther lock her away anyway. How maybe, some tiny part of him had been relieved not to be the one to make the decision.

He’d never actually finished her book – never made it past chapter 1.

He wondered what she had to say about him.

“Yeah, come in,” he said, sitting up in bed.

She entered carrying a plate. “I thought you might be hungry.”

Diego smiled a little. It smelled amazing even across the room. He reached out and accepted it when she walked it to him.

He thought that was all, but she took a seat at the end of his bed. “I was always the most jealous of you,” she said.

Diego choked on his lamb. “Me?”

Vanya nodded.

“Why _me_? I just throw knives – I’m a circus sideshow attraction, not anything worth being jealous over,” he said. “I mean, Allison, or Five…”

“That’s why I was jealous,” she said. “Everyone else, their powers were so huge, so overwhelming… I mean, I watched everyone else’s powers poison them from the inside. Yours were enough for people to take notice, but not enough for everyone to think you were the one who could save the world.”

Or destroy it, she didn’t say. They were both thinking it.

“I think Five is jealous too,” she said softly. “If you could time travel, but you knew you couldn’t do anything to prevent a hundred thousand disasters from taking place… I can see how it would keep him up at night.”

“And I just throw knives,” Diego murmured.

Vanya nodded.

“Are you still jealous of me?” Diego said.

“More than ever.”

Diego smiled. “Thanks, Van.”

She squeezed his hand. “Anytime.”

 

He came out of his room late in the night, unsurprised that Klaus was up and knitting in the parlor. He’d always kept odd hours, and without chemical substances to help him sleep, little wonder he was awake now.

“Hey,” Diego said.

“Hello, you honorable prince among men, you,” Klaus said, not missing a beat.

Diego rolled his eyes.

“You know that everyone dies, right?” Klaus said.

Right to the meat of it. Klaus was usually flightier than this, liked to play guessing games, make people wait. He must have gotten impatient waiting for Diego to come out.

“I know.”

“Do you?” Klaus looked up, eyes both luminous and voluminous in the dim light. “Do you really?”

Diego scowled. “I could just go back to my room, dickhead,” he said.

“I’m serious,” Klaus said, and he sounded like it, which was rare. “I want you to acknowledge to me that you know this.”

“I know it,” Diego said hotly.

“There are worse things than dying, Diego,” Klaus said, his voice as soft as Diego’s was heated. “Eventually, everyone’s thread meets its end.”

“Then why are we bothering with stopping the apocalypse?” Diego said, gesturing sharply with his hand. “Why are we even trying, when everyone’s going to die anyway. Shouldn’t we just let it happen, if we’re going to be all zen and bullshit about it?”

Klaus flinched.

“Forgive me for wanting to protect people, I didn’t realize it was such an unpopular opinion among this crowd,” Diego said. Sometimes he thought it was the only good lesson Reginald had ever taught him. Sometimes he wondered why he’d been the only one of his siblings to think so.

“It’s not that we don’t want to – It’s just that we know there’s nothing we can do,” said Klaus. “The apocalypse? That’s something we can change. The future? That’s something we can work on fixing. But the past is the past.”

“How wise,” Diego said sourly, sitting on the couch and drawing up his knees. “I feel like I just snorted the inside of a fortune cookie.”

“Dude, don’t say the word snort right now,” Klaus said immediately. “My delicate mind can’t take it.”

Diego looked at him, taking it all in. “So you’re really trying, huh?” he said finally. “I would have thought…”

Klaus looked away. “Feels like this is my one shot,” he said. “If not now, when?”

“I’m all for it,” Diego said, shrugging. “Seems like as good a time as any. If you need any help…”

Klaus grinned. “You’re such a caretaker.”

Patch used to call him a martyr. “Some people say.”

“No, really,” Klaus said, leaning over and poking his cheek. “Behind all that leather and bluster, there’s a little Kanga looking for her Roo, isn’t there?”

“I genuinely have no idea what the fuck that means,” Diego said, honestly.

Klaus laughed.

“Sometimes I think you’re weirder when you’re sober,” Diego said.

Klaus shrugged. “The world is my drug, Diego. I’m –”

“If you say _high on life_ ,” Diego said, shaking his head.

Klaus dimpled at him.

His eyes never used to sparkle like that, not when they were all hazy and glazed over from the drugs. Diego had always liked Klaus’s eyes.

“What?” he said, when Klaus kept staring at him.

“I admire that about you,” Klaus said. “How much you still care, even after the rest of us forgot how.”

Diego scowled and looked away.

“I mean it,” Klaus said, turning his face back to meet his with a hand on his cheek. “I find it really inspiring, Diego.”

Diego stared as Klaus’s face kept getting closer. “What are you…?”

The world _tipped_ , suddenly, and Diego went rolling off the couch, bracing himself for the collision with the floor that never came.

*

They tumbled out of the portal and hit the ground in a heap.

“Oh, god dammit,” said Five.

“Oh, _god dammit_ ,” said Diego, staring around at his siblings as they all stared around at each other.


	2. Chapter 2

Diego was aware of Klaus’s inane babbling in a distant way, but more of him was focused on what the hell was happening here. He’d lived this day – this has already happened, so why wasn’t anyone else aware of it?

“Five?” he said, interrupting the conversation. “Something weird is happening.”

“Do you think I don’t realize that?” Five said, gesturing around at all of them.

“No, weirder,” Diego said.

Klaus looked interested. “Weirder than us going back to our 18-year-old selves? Ooh, let me guess. You came back with three balls. Two penises! Penii? You can read thoughts now. Can you read my thoughts?”

“Thankfully, no,” Diego growled. He turned to Five. “I’ve already, uh, lived today. This has already happened.”

Everyone went still.

“Ooh, that’s a mind-fuck,” said Klaus.

“Today?” Five said. “Starting when? Starting back –”

“No, just from the time we came out of the…” Diego gestured in the air. “You said we were going to go back as soon as you figured it out, and you worked on the equations all day – you said we were cancelling the apocalypse.”

“Ha!” said Klaus. “And the end of our hope –”

“The _edge_ of our hope,” Diego gritted out.

“I’m pretty sure that’s not right,” said Klaus.

Diego sighed.

“Interesting,” Five said. “Very interesting. If it happens again tomorrow, come tell me again and I’ll have a better idea, but I can’t formulate a working theory without replication of the anomaly.”

“That’s all you’ve got?” Diego said.

Five shrugged. “For the moment, I think the rest of us should all act as if today is a normal day.”

“ _Normal_ ,” said Luther.

“In the space-time sense,” Five said. “As if today counts. You understand.”

“So what am I supposed to do, then?” Diego said.

“Whatever you want,” Five said. “Nothing too insane, please, I’d hate to have to bail you out of jail tomorrow because you had some kind of freak premonition that got out of hand.”

“Shotgun!” said Klaus.

 

“Maybe it’s a secondary power,” said Klaus, feet propped up on the dashboard of Reginald’s car that Diego had hotwired.

“I already have a secondary power,” said Diego. In Klaus's defense, the ability to hold his breath forever was eminently forgettable. He just comforted himself with the reminder that at least his weren't as boring as Luther's.

Klaus’s gaze on his lips was so not subtle. Diego could feel it like a physical touch. “I always forget about that,” Klaus said. “Relatedly, can I ask some questions?”

“No,” said Diego, because that way lay uncomfortable conversations that led to even more uncomfortable boners. “I already know what you’re going to ask, you’re not original.”

“Wow, that was so unnecessary,” Klaus said. “How do you know I’m not going to ask something really profound and thought-provoking?”

“Yes, it does come in handy during blowjobs, rimjobs, and oral sex with girls,” Diego said.

Klaus was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Okay, so I’m not original.”

Diego snorted.

“So maybe it’s a tertiary power,” Klaus said. “What did Five call it? Premonition?”

“It’s not premonition, I lived today already,” Diego said. “I know the difference.”

“Any theories?”

“I’m leaving speculation to the King of Time Travel,” said Diego. “And by that I definitely mean Five.”

“But I’m a fair and gracious ruler!” said Klaus. “As just as I am beautiful! As generous as I am magnificent! As –”

From experience, Diego knew this could go on for some time. “Thai or Indian?” he interrupted.

“Thai,” Klaus said, not missing a beat. “You impugn my good name when I’ve only ever been reasonable with you, peon. I should have you thrown in the stocks for that.”

“Is the King of Time Travel… medieval for some reason?” Diego checked as he took the left turn towards the Thai restaurant he liked.

“The King of Time Travel is all things to all people,” said Klaus, warming to the subject. “No one knows who he is or where he came from – he appeared one day in a hot air balloon, and – Oh, wait, that’s the Wizard of Oz. He appeared one day from the sea, sprouting forth from an open clam shell –”

“Birth of Venus,” said Diego.

“He appeared one day frozen in a block of ice –”

“Not sure if that’s Captain America or Avatar,” Diego said, grinning.

“Fuck, I forgot I was with the only sibling who actually gets my pop culture references,” Klaus said.

“Yeah, tough luck, nerd-boy,” Diego said, pulling into the parking lot.

 

“Where have you been all day?” Ben asked when Klaus and Diego got back.

“Thai food, movies, pouting when we got carded at the movies, going to the gym, pouting about not being able to lift the weight of a full-grown man, getting weirdly happy when we witnessed petty larceny at a gas station, pouting when the robbers didn’t take us seriously…”

“I take it you are speaking on behalf of Diego,” Ben said.

“Oh, don’t assume, I could be speaking on behalf of any number of siblings,” Klaus said brightly.

Diego rolled his eyes.

“You missed Five unloading on Reginald, it was beautiful,” Ben said. “He went full Liam Neeson on his ass.”

“Oh, what?” Klaus said, pouting. “Damn, I would have loved to see that.”

“You’ll see it tomorrow,” Diego said, starting to head up the stairs.

“Oh, right, that,” Klaus said. “Kind of a downer, honestly, Diego.”

Diego flipped him off and kept walking.

“Maybe it’s premonition!” Klaus called after him.

“Yeah, we’ll see,” said Diego.

*

They tumbled out of the portal and hit the ground in a heap.

“Oh, god dammit,” said Five and Diego together.

“Oh, this is fan –!” Klaus started to say.

Diego stormed over to Five and grabbed him by the shirt, dragging him forward while Klaus gulped his words back behind him. “It happened again,” he snarled, “so what are you going to do about it?”

Five teleported away, like sand through his fingers. “Excuse me?” he said.

“We’ve already lived this day twice, and you told me if it happened again that you’d have a better idea of what was happening,” Diego said. “So what’s your grand idea, chief?”

Five pressed his lips together, looking at him for a moment.

“We’ve lived this day?” said Luther.

“Twice?” said Ben.

“Oh my god, Ben?” Allison said.

Diego ignored them.

“It seems that the universe doesn’t approve of my actions,” said Five. “People aren’t supposed to do… what I did.”

“What does that mean?”

“We’ve torn through the fabric of space-time, and it’s trying to knit itself back together,” Five said. “It’s… rejecting the error. We’re a bug in the code, and it’s overwriting us.”

“What does that mean?” Diego said again, narrowing his eyes. “ _Practically_.”

“Practically, it means we need to get you back to your own time,” Five said. “Where the universe wants you to be.”

“Great, let’s jump,” said Diego. “I can explain the rest when we get there.”

Five grimaced. “Rarely is complex interdimensional travel so simple. I made a judgment call in the face of imminent death and it led us to this point. If I act rashly again, it might wipe us out of existence entirely.”

Diego went quiet. He rubbed his jaw.

“Without the immediate threat of apocalyptic hellfire to force me into action, I’m not wont to act foolishly,” Five said. “It _has_ to be the right time.”

“So… what do we do?” Luther said.

“I have to engineer the calculations correctly,” Five said. “I take it I didn’t succeed the first day?”

Diego shook his head.

“A pity. Without extended time to build a model, I’ll have to begin every day anew. It’s difficult to make progress that way,” Five said. “And the only communication I have with myself from day to day is your limited memory to convey information.”

“My memory is fine,” Diego said.

“Not as good as I need it to be,” Five said matter-of-factly. He thought, then blanched. “Oh good god, am I going to have to teach _you_ physics?”

There was a brief silence. Klaus let out of a stifled laugh behind them.

“This is going to be more difficult than I thought,” Five said, as if to himself.

 

This time, they made it up to Five’s room before Reginald came barging out to waylay them.

Diego sat on the bed watching Five scrawl formulas on the wall above him and thought, well. It probably didn’t bode well that he didn’t recognize some two-thirds of the symbols he was writing there outside of his Ancient Greek studies from some 15 years before.

“So what are the rest of us supposed to do?” Ben asked after some time.

“Nothing,” Five said absently. “I doubt even your real selves would be useful to me.”

“Our real selves?” Allison asked.

Five waved a hand. “Only Diego’s consciousness is real, currently. The rest of us are… simulations, to extend the computer program metaphor. If he doesn’t interfere, we’ll keep running the same occurrences every day in exactly the same way.”

“We’re NPCs,” Ben said, stunned.

“Precisely,” said Five.

“So where are all our, uh, consciousnesses?” Luther asked.

“In stasis, I suppose,” said Five. “Hopefully they’re returned to us when we reach your time.”

“Hopefully?” said Luther, higher-pitched.

Five shrugged. “Time travel is a crapshoot. I warned you it would be dicey.”

“Was that a pun?” said Klaus, grinning.

Five paused, thinking about it. “Ha. Not intentionally.”

“Why me?” Diego said, rubbing his face with his hands. “Why can’t it have been you?”

“I know, buddy,” Five said, patting his head.

Diego glared up at him.

“Luther, you need to deal with Reginald. I don’t care what you tell him, just make sure he doesn’t bother me today,” Five said.

“Got it,” Luther said, seemingly relieved to have something to do.

“Allison, Ben, handle Vanya. Likewise, I don’t care what you tell her, as long as it doesn’t bring about the end of the world.”

“Sounds good,” Allison said.

Five looked at Diego. “You, I mean. Start learning basic physics?” He looked doubtful. “I don’t care what you do today, but come back here some 30 minutes before the time resets so I can teach you what information to relay to me tomorrow.”

“Anything for Klaus?” Klaus said.

Five shrugged.

“Excellent,” Klaus said, rubbing his hands together. “I have some errands to run.”

“Don’t get high,” Diego said.

Klaus gave him a half smile, shaking his head as he walked out. “Why not? S’not going to matter tomorrow, is it? None of it counts.”

Diego frowned, but he couldn’t argue it.

 

He’d studied physics before, but not for over a decade. It turned out not to be remotely like riding a bike, unless you meant crashing gracelessly into various obstacles as he tried to find his balance. Literally the only thing he remembered was the right hand rule for magnetic fields, and somehow he didn’t think that was going to come in handy.

“When’s the last time you encountered a problem that couldn’t be solved by punching it until it falls over?” Allison asked him as he pored over the various textbooks spread out over the kitchen table.

“Ask your boyfriend,” Diego said, flipping a page.

Allison scowled. “Point taken,” she said.

He knew he should apologize, but he didn’t want to. That was one nice thing about being in a computer simulation, he supposed. “What in the fuck is metaphysics,” he muttered, mostly to himself.

“Oh god, we’re so fucked,” said Allison.

“Like you know any more than I do,” Diego said, scowling back.

“Yeah, but I’m not the one who’s supposed to get us back,” she retorted.

“Neither am I, that’s Five,” Diego said. “I’m just playing backup.”

“I suppose that’s true,” said Allison. “But if you get good enough at it, you could help him with the equations.”

“I don’t even want to know how many cycles it would take for me to reach Five’s level of understanding of complex physics,” Diego said.

Allison quirked her lips. “How many times did Bill Murray loop, anyway?”

Diego looked up. “You know, I’ve never actually…”

Allison seized him by the wrist and dragged him up.

 

“Huh,” Diego said, chewing absently on the last of the Sour Patch Kids as the end credits for Groundhog Day played on the TV. “You know, despite your intention, I don’t think I’m going to take this as a documentary.”

Allison laughed and smacked his shoulder. “That wasn’t my point. I just thought it would be fun.”

“God, I _hope_ I’m not here long enough to become a master ice sculptor,” Diego said, making a face.

“Aw, but you’re so good with knives already,” Allison said, batting her eyelashes.

“I worry that you actually think those are related,” Diego said. “You know they’re not, right?”

She shook her head at him. “You have to have a quip for everything, don’t you?”

“I’m not _Klaus_ ,” Diego said defensively. “I can be sincere.”

“I know,” she said, softening. “Do you want to talk?”

Diego went quiet, thinking about this. “Come to me in 100 more cycles and I’ll probably have a lot more to say,” he said finally. “I figure I gotta stagger the emotional breakdowns if I hope to get through this with my sanity intact.”

She pursed her lips at him. “I take it back, sincere Diego is unnerving. Go back to the quips.”

“Gladly,” Diego said. “Should we talk about your failed marriage some more?”

Allison rolled her eyes.

 

He came back to Five’s room some 40 minutes before the time flipped. “So?”

“Tell me what you told me before,” Five said absently, tilting his head this way and that as he looked over the calculations he’d made on the wall. “Then tell me that Rosa walked quickly and effortlessly through the valley towards the wide, wide lake.”

“Uh,” Diego said. He was kind of counting on Five to be the one not to crack, here.

“It’s a mnemonic shorthand, you nimrod,” said Five, rolling his eyes. “I’ll know what it means.” He shook his head at Diego. “You nimrod.”

Diego raised his eyebrows. “You needed a lot of mnemonic shorthands in the apocalypse?”

“You’d be surprised,” said Five. “You remember it?”

“Rosa walked quickly and effortlessly through the valley towards the wide lake.”

“Wide, wide,” Five corrected. “The distinction is important.”

“Sure,” Diego said, “wide, wide.”

Five nodded at him.

*

The next day, Diego cut Five off before he could even open his mouth to curse.

“We’re reliving this day, I’ve already been through it three times, mine is the only real consciousness, everyone else is a simulation, we’re cancelling the apocalypse, my memory is insufficient, and Rosa walked quickly and effortlessly through the valley towards the wide, wide lake.”

The others all stared at him.

“Fascinating,” said Five. “I’ll get to work, then.” He blinked out of sight in the blue warp of light.

“…What?” said Ben.

“Ben?” Allison gasped.

Diego groaned and crouched down, head in his hands.

*

 “Okay, so, physics 101,” said Luther, because it turned out the stereotypes were wrong and Ben was horrifically bad at the hard sciences. Diego felt pretty bad for assuming otherwise, honestly. “Where are we starting? Kinematics? Newton? Oscillation? I take it we can’t just jump right into quantum.”

Diego scratched his cheek and looked at the ceiling.

“Diego, give me something to work with,” said Luther. “Do you remember _anything_ about physics?”

“The right hand rule for magnetic fields,” Diego muttered.

Luther chewed on the inside of his cheek, clearly trying not to laugh. “Technically, that’s better than nothing.”

Diego scowled.

“Okay, so, physics 101,” said Luther again. “The word physics comes from the Ancient Greek physike, meaning knowledge of nature. It’s the natural science of matter and –”

“Dude, I’m not 12,” Diego said. “You can jump forward a bit from there.”

“Alright. Define force,” said Luther.

“What?”

“Define force.”

Diego cleared his throat. “It’s like… strength. Like. Force.”

Luther stared at him for a long moment.

Diego squirmed. “Okay, start over,” he muttered. “Your point is taken.”

“Physics is the natural science of matter and its motion and behavior through space and time, as well as energy and force,” Luther continued.

Diego groaned and put his head on the table.

*

“How’s it going?” Vanya asked, leaning on the back of Diego’s chair and looking over his shoulder.

Luther put a finger to his lips. “He’s concentrating,” he said in an undertone. “Give him a minute.”

“Okay, so…” Diego said. “If I throw up these three oranges and these three apples, the chance of them lining up _as_ three oranges and then three apples is… 36.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s six squared,” Diego said. “And the total number of combinations is… six factorial, so…” He punched it into a calculator. “720. That means there’s a … one in twenty chance that it lands in the prescribed order.”

“And that means…?”

Diego rubbed his temples. He was so close to getting this. “It means that…”

“What does it indicate about order?”

“That disorder is much more likely than order,” said Diego triumphantly.

“Right,” said Luther, looking proud. “So talk it through. What does that mean about entropy?”

It galled Diego, how much he didn’t want to disappoint him. _Dad got his hooks in you deep, kid_ , he told himself. Still, he thought about it seriously, trying to put it together.

“How many atoms are there in this orange?” Luther said, picking it up.

“Ballpark? Shit-tons,” Diego said.

“Right,” said Luther. “And this orange is in a state of…?”

“Order,” said Diego. _Oh_. “The probability of the atoms arranging themselves to form that orange is microscopic compared to the probability of them _not_ arranging themselves as an orange. Entropy leading to disorder is just – probability.”

Luther beamed.

“Wow, good job, Diego,” Vanya said sincerely. “How many cycles has it been to get here?”

“He doesn’t want to tell me,” Luther said. “But either way, that’s really good, Diego.”

“Which is why it’s so hard for Five to balance his equations right,” Diego realized, ignoring them. “Because the chance of him fucking up is so, so much higher than the chance of him getting it right.”

Luther nodded.

“So he’s trying to… manipulate the conditions to give him some control of the order,” Diego said, this time more of a question. “Which is…”

“In scientific terms, the phrase you’re looking for is _batfuck impossible_ ,” Luther said.

Vanya snorted.

“Christ,” Diego said. “Good fucking luck, kid.”

“Pretty much,” said Luther.

*

“Science physics science mumble science mumble equations science quantum,” Klaus intoned at the other side of the table.

“What are you doing?” Luther said.

“Narrating this riveting action sequence,” Klaus said, kicking his feet up on the table. “I might cut this one when I write the screenplay of this after we get back.”

Diego ignored him. He picked up his coffee mug, scowling at the ring of condensation he’d left on his scratch paper. “Is T 2L/c or is that T prime?”

“It’s arbitrary,” Luther said. “2L/C is the one moving with the apparatus, traditionally thought of as T. T prime is usually the observer from outside.”

“Square root of four L-squared plus d-squared,” Diego said.

“Right,” said Luther.

“Four x times Spock prime is two to the power of Kirk,” said Klaus.

“You are actively unhelpful,” said Luther.

“That’s what Five always says,” Diego said absently, dragging a textbook close to himself.

Klaus giggled a little. “So you’re making progress?” he asked Diego.

Diego frowned. “More or less,” he said, although each physics breakthrough just reinforced how thoroughly fucked they were – every new understanding of the complexities of matter and energy transfer was another wrench in the gears of them ever getting back to their own time. How the fuck Five had pulled it off in the first place was beyond him.

“You have fun with that, Einsteins,” Klaus said, swinging his legs off the table and standing up. “It sounds really just super fun. I, meanwhile, am going to eat Nutella out of the jar and watch Project Runway, because there ain’t no rules in this timeline, son. Toodles!”

“What a tool,” said Luther.

“Yeah,” said Diego. He definitely needed to get his hands on that jar of Nutella tomorrow.

*

Sometime into the third chapter of _Time Travel in Einstein’s Universe_ , Diego registered that the scratch of chalk overhead had stopped. He looked up.

Five was looking at him queerly. “How many times have you looped now?”

Diego thought back. He’d lost track, he realized. “Thirty-something. Maybe forty-something.”

“I think you could use a break,” Five said.

“But we have to…”

“What’s the rush?” Five said. “This is dead time. Loop 10 times or 10,000, the end result is the same.”

Diego blinked.

“You could use this time to do anything you’ve ever wanted,” Five said. “Learn a language. Eat an entire tray of brownies. Punch Reginald in the face. You can explore the simulation, you’ve got time.”

“But shouldn’t I… try to get us back sooner rather than later?”

Five shot him that _I can’t believe I’m related to someone this thick_ look he’d so perfected. “I’m telling you that it doesn’t matter. And you’re starting to… crack a little bit around the edges.” He touched the corner of Diego’s eye. “You don’t need to push yourself. We’re not in a hurry.”

“Oh,” Diego said.

“Take a fucking break, kid,” Five said in a kindly voice. “You’ve earned it.”

 

Diego considered what this even meant as he fixed himself a cup of coffee in the kitchen. He hesitated, then added an extra sugar cube.

That probably wasn’t what Five had meant.

He’d been pushing himself for so long that he didn’t have an idea how to slow down. He worked out to stay fit, he ate healthy, he mopped floors during the day and cracked skulls at night, he devoted every waking moment to actually _doing_ something for society instead of just existing like the rest of his siblings.

And now Five said _take a break_ , like it was that easy.

“I heard what you and Five were talking about,” said Klaus from the doorway, right on cue.

Diego looked up, then he smiled. If any of his siblings would be useful for this, it would be Klaus.

“Got any tips for me?” he asked.

“Oh, loads,” said Klaus. “Weed, porn, booze. Petting dogs! Green tea Frappuccinos. Butterfly gardens, beach trips, shrooms, roller coasters, tie-dye, drunk painting, ten-inch –”

“Okay,” said Diego loudly. “Point taken. I need to get out of the house.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that,” Klaus said, slinking over.

Diego went tense, immediately. “Now, Klaus?” he said. He thought they’d gotten over this as teenagers – how many times did he have to reject him before it stuck?

“Didn’t you listen to anything he said, Di-e-go?” Klaus intoned, settling a hand on his hip and leaning in. “None of it counts. It all gets reset tomorrow. Rob a bank, steal a dog, fuck your brother. Who cares?”

“Huh,” Diego said.

“You can’t take advantage of me, I’m a simulation,” Klaus said. “Just close your eyes and enjoy it, because in the morning, slate’s clean, big guy.” His voice had dropped to an almost croon. Somehow his hand had found its way up Diego’s shirt without him realizing it.

“ _Huh_ ,” Diego said.

 

“Oh, god, Diego,” Klaus said, bracing his hand against the headboard as Diego fucked the brains out of him, his back arched in a beautiful bow, all long and lean and graceful. “Diego, fuck.”

Diego pulled out, slowly – slammed into him and made him shout, and did it again, and again. “Scream it,” he said.

“What, I’m being too – quiet for you?” Klaus said. “Sounds like a – you problem, man.” He grinned up at Diego, eyes hot.

“Oh, it’s on,” Diego said, and he pushed Klaus’s thigh up so it was bent against his chest, giving him the room to just _wreck_ him.

Nicely for his ego, Klaus’s eyes actually rolled back at that one, and his chest was heaving when he cried out, “Diego, please, _please_.” He was whining, these hitched sounds that Diego was forcing out of him with every thrust, and it had a killer effect on Diego’s concentration.

“Come on, baby,” Diego growled out, “you’re sober now, aren’t you? You can come like his, can’t you?”

Klaus tossed his head on the pillow. “I don’t know, I don’t – I’ve never –”

“Then this’ll be the first time,” Diego said, and he redoubled his efforts, slowing down but adding a bit of an undulating grind to his motions, and Klaus _yelped_.

“Diego, please,” he said, mouth open, eyes wet, looking up at him with this beautifully vacant expression, “please, can’t I just –” He reached for his cock, but Diego caught his hand and slammed his wrist back into the mattress, which made his whole body shudder. “Diego!”

“You’re going to come on my cock, babe, or you’re not coming at all,” he hissed, right in Klaus’s ear, bent over him and pressing his leg back all the way into his chest.

“ _Boys_!”

Despite himself, Diego instinctively froze at the sound of that British accent. Like he was 12 again, that skinny, stuttering little boy with that ingrained shiver of fear and anticipation.

Of _course_ Reginald had keys to their rooms. Diego had forgotten that.

Klaus touched his cheek. They met eyes, and Klaus smirked slowly.

Right, Diego thought. “You might want to keep walking, because we’re not stopping, Reg,” he said, and started to move again.

“This is the most fucked up thing we’ve ever done,” Klaus whispered, and then he arched up and gave a loud moan.

“That will be quite enough,” said Reginald, and his shoes clicked closer.

In an instant, Diego had a knife in his hand, pointed in the air at Reginald. “I said keep walking,” he said. “It wasn’t a suggestion.”

Klaus, eyes gleaming like the Cheshire cat, raked his fingernails down Diego’s back.

Reginald’s gasp caught in his throat.

“I’m not warning you again,” Diego said, palming the knife to throw it.

There was a moment of silence as Reginald seemed to gather himself. “We will discuss this later,” he said, and his footsteps faded off, the door slamming behind him.

“Yeah, we’ll discuss it, whatevs,” Klaus said. “Come on, man, dick me and dick me good.” He thumped his heels against Diego’s back.

“Right,” Diego said, laughing and getting back to it.

 

Afterwards, they traded a cigarette back and forth, strewn diagonally over the bed with Diego’s head propped on Klaus’s belly.

“Was he always that easy to intimidate?” Klaus asked.

“If I don’t interfere, Five scares the shit out of him and he hides in his office and sulks all day,” Diego said idly, breathing in a lungful of smoke. He let it out slowly, lips parted so the smoke wafted out. “I wonder why we never tried before.”

“I mean, I remember you yelling at him before you left,” Klaus said.

“But before that,” Diego said. “Why did we do what he said? What was he going to do if we refused?”

“We were children, we didn’t know,” said Klaus. “That’s how abusers get away with it – they get their hooks in early, and you start thinking there’s nothing you can do but take it.”

“What a dick,” said Diego. “So glad he’s dead.”

“Amen to that, home-slice,” said Klaus. “So, quick debrief. Sex – amazing?”

“Eh,” Diego said. “I’ve had better.”

Klaus shot him a look of open-mouthed outrage.

“I mean, s’not like you did anything besides lie there and take it,” Diego said, grinning. “Maybe if you demonstrated a bit of skill, I’d have a more favorable comparison.”

“Oh, you think I’m that easy,” Klaus said. “You think you can reverse psychology me into twerking on your dick like some kind of _harlot_.”

Diego grinned wider, raising his eyebrows.

“Give me twenty minutes,” said Klaus. “We’ll talk.”

“Sure thing, babe,” Diego said, stubbing out the cigarette on the wall.

 

When they came out of the bedroom, they ran right into Luther in the hallway. He stopped dead when he saw them, face twisting with a series of uncomfortable emotions. “That was so wrong,” he said. “We shouldn’t need to talk about how wrong that was.”

“You’re just jealous Diego’s hot in bed,” Klaus said breezily, sidling past him.

“Heh,” said Diego.

“Did it have to be so loud?” Luther said with an audible whine.

“You’ll be over it by morning,” said Klaus, patting his arm.

*

In the morning, after Diego relayed his pertinent information to Five and got him working on his chalkboard walls, he paused in the doorway. “So, need anything else from me?”

“I don’t believe so,” Five said, shooting him an amused look. “Places to be?”

“You could say that,” Diego said, and walked to Klaus’s bedroom.

He and Ben were lying back in bed, feet propped on the wall and heads hanging down off the side. They both looked at him upside-down.

“Oh,” Diego said. “I don’t want to interrupt.”

“Depends which of us you’re looking for,” Klaus said. “He’s about to go out on a sashimi date with Allison and Vanya. What is sashimi, anyway?”

“Raw fish, he doesn’t want it,” Diego said. “I was looking for you anyway.”

“Good to know,” said Ben. He hopped off the bed, waving at them both as he left.

Klaus sat up as well. “Looking for moi? Why, Diego, whatever for?”

Diego kicked the door shut. This time, he wedged the chair under it.

Klaus looked briefly surprised, then he started to smile, slow and curling. “Why, Diego, _whatever_ for.”

“I didn’t get to feel you suck my dick last time,” said Diego. “Let’s remedy that.”

“We should definitely remedy that,” Klaus agreed, swinging his legs off the bed and reaching for Diego. “Was I good in bed? Please tell me I was good.” He nimbly undid the button of Diego’s jeans.

“You’re a bendy fucker,” Diego said, instead of answering.

“I knew it,” Klaus said, pleased.


	3. Chapter 3

Diego meant to go back to the physics – really, he did. He passed along the mnemonic to Five and then went into Luther’s room, running his hand over the spines of the same physics books he’d cracked open however many dozens of times before, but.

But.

Something held his hand.

“What are you thinking about?” Vanya said from the doorway.

“I’ve been studying physics the last – god, like, 50 cycles,” Diego said. “Five told me to take a break, and I did, and now I feel like I should hit the books again.”

“But…?”

“But I don’t want to.”

“Why not?” she asked, sounding genuinely curious.

“Because…” Diego hesitated, trying to sort his thoughts into a coherent explanation and coming up short.

“You never did therapy, did you?” she asked.

Diego looked at her. “Why, did you?”

“God, of course,” Vanya said, sitting on the foot of Luther’s bed. “Are you kidding? I have a black belt in therapy.”

Diego half-smiled.

“You can usually tell people who go to therapy because they get better at sorting out their thoughts,” she said. “They know the right questions to ask themselves to be able to come up with the answers.”

He hummed. “I guess… I guess I feel like really learning physics is my last resort. When I get so desperate here that I’m crawling in my own skin, I can turn back to physics as one last safety net to save my sanity."

Vanya snorted. "How very Linkin Park of you."

"Fuck off," he said.

"Sorry. Go on."

"I just, you know, I figure it'll make me feel like I do have some control over this batshit situation. Regain my equilibrium.”

“And you’re not there yet,” she said.

“I’m not there yet,” he said slowly.

“You’re that worried about breaking down?”

He smiled at her. He knew there was a hint of it in his eyes already – the same hint that Five had seen, that had sent Diego into Klaus’s bed.

“Eesh,” she said, looking at his expression. “Yeah, I’d save it. You’re gonna need that for your hardcore rock bottom experience - the full Taking Back Sunday, to extend the metaphor.”

Diego chuckled. “I know,” he said.

“What?”

Diego cocked his head at her.

“You were about to say something else,” she said. “What is it?”

Diego shook his head, unwilling to voice the nebulous thought that was drifting in his peripheral vision, not wanting to formalize it to himself.

He was worried that delving back into physics would be cold comfort, when he was half-certain the only thing he’d learn was how little control he really had in the end.

The last, desperate fumbling of a trapped man trying to find the rope out of the abyss. He couldn’t reach for it yet, because he didn’t want to know once and for all whether it was really there. Like this, quantum theory simultaneously was and wasn’t his way out. Schrodinger’s metaphysics, as it were.

Fuck, that didn’t even mean anything. “It doesn’t really make sense,” he said. “It’s the nerdiest existential crisis of all time.”

Vanya pressed her lips together. “So don’t, then,” she said. “I don’t really think Five expects you to be much help anyway. Let it rest.”

Diego nodded.

“But if you need more reading material…” She held up a finger, then jogged out of the room and came back a few minutes later, holding a book.

His stomach flipped when he saw the cover.

“You told me once you never actually read it,” she whispered. “Maybe you could read it now?”

 

Diego really didn’t want to read her book, but Vanya wanted him to, and that meant something. So he retreated back to his room and curled up on the bed, starting at the preface, determined to get through it all in one day so he could be done with it.

He read, and read, and then he closed the book and went to find Vanya.

“It’s not fucking fair,” he said, startling her in the kitchen where Grace was just gathering the family for dinner.

“Diego?” said Allison.

“You think we were all in some fun fucking club where we got to hang out all the time without you – we were just laughing and skipping and having a grand old time while you were sad, pathetic victim Vanya who never got to join in,” Diego snapped.

” _Diego_ ,” said Luther warningly.

“No, it’s okay,” said Vanya, her voice even. “I won’t lose control.”

“He put me in a _tank_ ,” Diego said, “he left me in there for _days_ , I was getting calories through an IV and he called it a training session. I didn’t sleep for 48 hours because I was terrified I’d instinctively start breathing and drown myself in there. I _still_ have nightmares, and you write this self-pitying bullshit about what a goddamn martyr you are.”

“Oh my god,” said Allison, pale-faced. “Diego, why didn’t you ever say anything?”

“Because, unlike Klaus, I don’t broadcast my abuse from a goddamn loudspeaker,” Diego said. “I just wanted her to know. I want you to know,” he directed at Vanya, “that it wasn’t fun.”

Klaus looked down. His knuckles were white from his grip on the chair in front of him.

“You got to play the violin,” Diego said, quieter. “You got to be a kid. You were protected and we were the ones on the front lines. You should know that.” He pointed sharply at her. “You should _know_ that.”

“Then tell me,” she said.

“I am telling you,” he said.

“No,” Vanya said, looking at him seriously. “Tell me when I’ll actually remember.”

“I will,” Diego said, abruptly weary - all fury gone in an instant, leaving him feeling almost dizzy in its sudden absence. He turned.

“Diego –” said Allison, stepping forward.

“No,” said Klaus and Vanya together.

“Just… let him be,” said Klaus softly.

Allison reluctantly stepped back.

Relieved, Diego went.

*

The next day, he waited next to Vanya’s unconscious body until she woke up. He’d sent everyone else away. Allison looked concerned, but they’d left him.

“Diego?” Vanya said, sitting up and rubbing her head. “Oh my god, did I - What happened?”

“Yeah, you caused the apocalypse so we had to warp back in time. Also, I read your book,” he said.

Vanya dragged in a sharp breath.

“I’m sorry for what we did to you,” he said, quietly. “I still think you’ve got the wrong impression of the, uh, dynamics at play then, but I can see why you would have it. We were assholes. You deserved better.”

“Wow,” Vanya said shakily. “This is unexpected.”

“I might have been less generous with my first feedback yesterday,” Diego said, quirking his lips.

She furrowed her brow. “Yesterday?”

“Oh, right, we’re stuck in a time loop, you’re not going to remember this tomorrow,” Diego said. “Doesn’t make it any less sincere, though.”

“Uh –”

“I resent you so much for thinking we were living it up and you were the one who had it so rough,” Diego said over her. “But I realized, like… If I wrote a book, it wouldn’t be a fair account either. We all have our own Funhouse mirror ideas of what our childhoods were like. Yours isn’t any less correct than mine is. Maybe mine is the worst one yet. So I’m sorry.” He took a deep breath. “It must have been hard for you.”

“It was,” Vanya said.

Diego grimaced.

“But. Probably causing the apocalypse was… overkill,” she admitted. “So. There is that.”

Diego laughed a little.

“Did you say we’re in a time loop?” she said.

“Yeah,” Diego said.

“Wow,” Vanya said. “Not to belittle your grand gesture at all, but talk about burying the lede there.”

“I’ll have time to fine-tune the apology,” Diego said. “Figured I had to start somewhere.”

“It’s a good first effort,” Vanya said, smiling.

*

Diego quickly discovered that heart to hearts were exhausting and that there was very little emotional payoff when your conversational partner completely forgot the discussion by the next day. He still wasn’t going back to physics, and even fucking Klaus lost the novelty after the first 20 times.

What had Five suggested? Eat a tray of brownies? Punch Reginald? Christ, lamest bucket list of all time.

So what _would_ Diego do with his last day on Earth?

 

“Whaaat are you doing,” Klaus said, pausing as he and Ben walked past the open doorway to the parlor.

Diego looked up at him upside-down.

“Diego said he was going to get tattooed because, in his words, why the hell not,” Vanya said, bent studiously over Diego’s ankle, tongue poking out of her mouth as she focused on her work.

“And after we stopped laughing at the idea of him passing out on the floor of the tattoo parlor after they got near him with the needle, we said we’d just do it ourselves,” Allison said, the fine tip of her Sharpie tickling over Diego’s bare hip.

“I want in!” Klaus said, dropping down on Diego’s other side and grabbing for a Sharpie.

“How bored are you?” Ben asked, hovering over Klaus’s shoulder and watching.

“I think that’s fairly self-evident,” Diego said, gesturing down at the living canvas that was his half-naked body. If he craned his neck, he could see Allison’s sun-with-sunglasses on his side, like something an eight-year-old girl would have drawn on a birthday card.

“I’m trying to decide how many days it would take me to get bored enough for this,” Ben said, sitting down on the couch to watch. “I think… 100, maybe.”

“I lost track, but I’m somewhere past that,” Diego said. “What’s the 50 day boredom marker for you?”

“Taking a baseball bat to this place,” Ben said promptly. “Just going fucking _wild_ on all the knickknacks.”

“Oh, shit,” Diego said. “I can’t believe I never thought of that.”

Klaus clicked his tongue. “What kind of pseudo teen rebel are you? Do you know nothing of the art of bildungsroman?”

“I. No?” said Diego.

Klaus patted his shoulder. “Your coming of age, señor guapo! There comes a point in every boy’s life –”

“I’m 30 years old,” Diego said.

“Tell that to your hairless chest, bud,” said Klaus. “There comes a point in every boy’s life when he separates himself from the home of his father. In this case, forcibly. With a bat.”

“I left home 13 years ago, I’ve done that shit,” Diego said. “I’ve come of age. I’ve bildungsed my roman.”

“Sexy scarred adult you has bildungsed his roman, but twinky 17-year-old you has not,” Klaus said. “Smash the place like a whack-a-mole. I insist.”

“I don’t know why you’re arguing, you know you’re going to do it,” said Ben.

Diego considered this. It was true. “It’s a matter of principle,” he said. “If you let his bullshit go without comment, the terrorists win.”

“You’re all ridiculous,” said Allison. “Whoa, Klaus, since when did you know how to draw like that?”

“Danke!” said Klaus, happily coloring in Diego’s nipple.

Diego propped himself up on his elbows, looking down at the massive portrait of a raccoon decorating his chest. It was beautiful in an abstract way, all loose, undefined edges like it was melting on his skin.

“Why a raccoon?” Diego asked.

“He thinks it’s his spirit animal,” Ben said, miming a shape around his eyes. “Eyeliner, aka mask. Nimble little hands. Always up to no good. Likes to eat out of the garbage.”

“I don’t _prefer_ eating out of the garbage, but after the fifth time it happens, you’re forced to ask yourself a few questions,” Klaus said.

“I can totally see that,” Diego said. “Fucking – evil little trash panda.”

“Exactly,” said Klaus, pleased, adding a little knife harness onto his raccoon.

*

Diego flipped the bat in his hands, giving a few practice swings to warm himself up. The only question was, where to start?

He’d always hated those stupid carved animal figurines.

The crack of the bat on wood was electric, as was the way the goat splintered when it struck the wall, cracking down the middle. The lamps shattered even more satisfyingly, glass crunching under the heel of his boot. The delicate antique chairs came apart more easily than he’d imagined – only the chaise longue gave him any trouble, but a few good wallops cracked it down the middle and then it was the work of seconds to turn it to kindling.

He didn’t notice his audience until he turned the bat on the wet bar, taking out a decanter of bourbon with a home-run swing just to hear a pained _“Noo, not the booze_ ” from the doorway.

He turned. Klaus looked like someone had just shot a puppy in front of him.

They were all there, leaning in the doorway like the Scooby-Doo gang, heads stacked one on top of the other. Even Five was watching, looking like he wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or concerned.

“…It was Ben’s idea,” Diego said, feeling a little ridiculous.

“Was it? Awesome,” said Ben, pleased. “Does that mean I can join in?’

“Sure, but it’s BYOB,” Diego said.

“Bring your own bat?” Allison said, lips twitching.

Diego grinned.

It was interesting to see where his siblings’ ire was directed – Luther attacked the taxidermized animal heads like they were pinatas, and Vanya went right for the Umbrella Academy merchandise, smashing through the glass display cases with a golf club and a genuinely feral look on her adorable face. Five amused himself by flitting around the room and tipping things off the top of bookcases, looking not unlike a cat as he raptly watched them shatter when they hit the ground.

Klaus, for his whining, went after the wet bar like the fucking Terminator. He started with a busted chair leg, but Diego traded him for the bat, wanting to enjoy the spectacle for what it was.

Klaus went, in a word, mental. In 30 years of being his brother, Diego had never seen him exert himself with so much intensity. He’d never thought that skinny body could do so much damage, but holy shit, Klaus took out every individual glass and bottle with machine-like focus, his face betraying no expression the whole while.

“Okay, yeah,” Diego told Ben. “This was a good idea.”

“Yep,” Ben said, contentedly shredding a pillow with one of Diego’s knives.

*

“Hey,” Diego said Five, leaning in the doorway and watching him mark up the walls with his traditionally incomprehensible equations. “You think I can die?”

Five frowned a little. “I hadn’t realized we’d already approached the suicidal phase of this journey. I’ll alert Grace to hide the toaster.”

Diego rolled his eyes. “Not suicidal. Just thinking that this would be a good chance for me to get some hands-on experience fighting more people than I can reasonably handle.”

“I wouldn’t risk it,” Five said.

“Perma-death, huh.”

Five shrugged. “Your consciousness is the only constant. I don’t know if it would outlive your body.”

“Right. The meatsuit,” Diego said.

“Just don’t bite off more than you could chew,” Five said.

“Would I do that?” Diego pushed off the doorframe and swaggered away.

“I can’t believe you’re asking me that,” Five called after him.

 

In his defense, Diego thought, he was not dead.

He was doing alright climbing through his bedroom window until he slipped in his own blood and face-planted onto the floor with a sickening crunch. He lay there, winded, trying to will himself to move.

In the corner of his swimming vision, he saw a pair of leather Oxfords crossing the room to him. Five, coming to tell him the mnemonic to pass on the next morning.

“Do you ever listen to a word I say?” said Five, nudging at his shoulder with his foot.

Diego groaned and got a mouthful of blood. His nose was definitely broken, in addition to the bullet in his abdomen, his almost certainly torn shoulder, and a punctured lung that he fancied he could hear deflating.

“How long before it resets?” Five asked.

“Hour and change,” Diego mumbled.

“Giving you an hour and change to bleed out on the floor,” Five said. “This was perhaps not your wisest choice.”

Diego grinned, managing to flop himself over onto his back. He was starting to see spots in his vision. “Worth it,” he said. “No regrets.”

Five sighed. “Say that again after Mom stitches up your gunshot wound, Rambo.”

“Ooh,” said Diego. “One regret.”

Five went to the door. “Luther, your idiot brother needs you to carry him to the infirmary,” he called down the hallway.

“Two regrets,” said Diego.

Five looked back at him and grinned.

*

“What is that?” Allison said.

“Muffins,” Diego said, trying to chip one of them out of the tin with one of his knives.

“That is not muffins,” Ben said. “That is a war crime.”

“You should have seen them yesterday,” Diego said, squinting.

“I mean this as gently as possible, but those things could be used as hockey pucks,” Klaus said. “Those things are Guantanamo torture devices. That thing is more of an Eldritch horror than Ben ever was.”

“How is that gentle?” Diego said.

“Said with love,” said Klaus, blowing him a kiss.

“I’m getting better,” Diego said, flipping them all off.

“Just… are you?” said Ben.

*

“Hold it in your lungs,” Klaus coached Five. “Repress the urge to cough if you can, but it’s a good sign if you have to – means it’s getting deep enough.”

“We’re going to hell,” Allison said, watching Five nod seriously and follow Klaus’s instructions.

“Oh, almost definitely,” Diego said, taking a hit of the joint and then passing it to Vanya. He held the smoke in his own lungs, choking a little at the burn. It had been a long time since he’d smoked, and he was out of practice.

Vanya, in contrast, took it and sucked in a long drag with practiced ease, tipping her head up and blowing it out in a stream. Diego was reminded, not for the first time, how little he really knew about her life since they’d all split off.

Five coughed into his hands, his tiny body curling in on itself. “Ugh, that’s the worst, why does anyone do that?”

“Ask again in two minutes,” Klaus said, wagging his eyebrows.

“We are so going to hell,” Luther said, eyeing the joint uncertainly as Vanya passed it to him. He held it like a pencil, which was adorable.

“Dude, _you’re_ more innocent than the kid, just take the hit,” Diego said. “Puff, puff, pass.”

Luther glared at him, but gamely lifted the joint to his lips and took a drag. He immediately erupted into coughs, and Klaus barely rescued the joint from his fingers before it could fall to the floor.

“It’s just the roach anyway,” Allison said, head tipped back, eyes half-lidded.

“The roach is the best part,” Klaus said, holding the end of the joint even as it smoldered in his fingers, undoubtedly burning the tips as he took the last deep drag through it. He held in the smoke.

Diego, sparked with a languid idea, wrapped his fingers around Klaus’s wrist and tugged him in. They hadn’t done anything yet this cycle, but he’d learned from experience that Diego could kiss him anywhere, anytime, and Klaus would just sink into it, willing and eager.

So he pulled him all the way in, unbalancing him so Klaus tipped forward into his lap, the last embers of the joint falling to the side as Klaus instinctively caught himself on Diego’s shoulders. Diego sealed their lips together, breathing in the secondhand smoke even as Klaus exhaled it with a surprised sound.

“Oh,” said Klaus, smiling as they parted.

Diego smirked back, holding his breath.

“What the hell was that?” Luther said flatly.

“S’called shotgunning, virgin-boy,” Diego said, letting the smoke waft out from his parted lips.

Luther gave a miffed-cat sound.

 

It was one of Klaus’s better ideas, Diego thought. Diego might have been a bit snappier than usual in his explanation that morning, and Klaus had gotten a thoughtful gleam in his eye before insisting they all meet him in the attic for an emergency meeting –

Where he’d produced a bag of neatly rolled joints and said, “Family bonding?”

Vanya and Allison hadn’t taken any convincing, and it turned out to be one of the only teen experiences Ben _hadn’t_ missed out on before he died, which didn’t surprise Diego. He and Klaus had always been close.

Luther, of course, had to go all responsible adult on them, but when Five had rolled his eyes and grabbed a joint with a _“Light me,_ ” to Klaus, even he’d realized there was no stopping this train.

Diego leaned against the attic wall with Klaus’s head in his lap, absently carding his fingers through his curls, and wondered why his life couldn’t always be this good.

“So this is what all the fuss is about?” Five said.

“Underwhelmed?” Ben asked, reaching over and snagging some Sour Patch Kids.

“Not… exactly,” said Five. “It’s…” He trailed off.

“Five?” Allison prompted.

“Oh,” Five said. “I forgot what I was saying.”

Vanya laughed. “You were going to say what it’s like.”

“Oh,” Five said. “It’s weird. I feel like I’m still capable of thinking just as clearly, but my mind keeps jumping tracks, and then I forget what I was thinking about before. But I’m pretty sure the thoughts themselves are coherent. Is that normal?”

“No, you’re the only person alive who responds to weed that way,” deadpanned Klaus. “You’re just that special.”

Five huffed.

“I thought it was supposed to make me hungry,” said Luther. “Mostly I just want to lie on the floor and listen to you guys talk.”

“Different people respond differently,” Diego said. “I never get paranoid, but I knew some people back at the Academy…” He shook his head.

“Shouldn’t we be having bullshit pseudo-philosophical conversations?” Five said. “If we’re going to do this, I want to do it right. I want this to be Burning Man meets a quad at Wesleyan on a spring day meets a slam poetry competition in Williamsburg.”

Klaus laughed. “You should be high all the time,” he told Five. “Anyone got any pseudo-philosophical topics to get the ball rolling?”

“Yeah, I got one,” Diego said.

“You?” Allison snorted. “No offense, Diego, but…”

“Full offense, Diego, but,” said Klaus. “You’ve never been super, uh, whimsical.”

“Punch first, ask questions later,” Allison said.

“I was reading this book on metaphysics,” Diego started.

“Ooh, I take it back, this should be good,” Klaus said, grinning up at him.

“Y’ever heard of the Ship of Theseus?” Diego said.

They all shook their heads, even Five, who normally pretended to know everything even if he didn’t. Five should, Diego thought, always be high.

“So there’s this, like, thought experiment, right. Take a ship. Old ship. Falling apart. Pieces start to rot. And you keep replacing the old pieces with new ones. Given enough time, you’ve replaced all the original parts. Is it the same ship?”

“Whoa,” Allison said.

“Mindfuck,” said Klaus.

“Not done yet,” Diego said. “So say you kept all the old rotted parts, and somehow, the technology arises to cure the, uh, rottage and restore all the parts so you can put the ship back together. Is _that_ the same ship? Which one has more right to be called the original ship?”

“ _Whoa_ ,” said Luther.

“Mindfuck!” said Ben.

“He’s still not done,” said Five.

“Five knows where I’m going,” Diego said. “Right?”

“Right,” said Five. “Our consciousnesses. And our bodies. When we go back – I mean, _are_ these our original bodies? Will they be our original consciousnesses? Are we really who we think we are? Right now I’m just a computer simulation – I’m AI. Is there any coming back from that, or is my consciousness in my body again just another form of AI that responds to external cues just like any program would?”

“Oh, shit,” Klaus said. “Guys, being high is supposed to be fun, not about giving me an existential crisis.”

“Fortunately, we’ll have forgotten it tomorrow,” Five said. “Diego, meanwhile…”

Diego groaned and thumped his head back against the wall.

*

“It’s like this,” Diego said. “Shift your hips to the right, then pop it again. Then pop it again. Pop your damn hip!”

“I just don’t think my hips pop,” said Five. “I don’t think that’s a verb that applies to my hips.”

“Pop it back. Pop it. Pop it back,” Diego said, miming the motion.

“Pop _what_?” said Five, baffled. “What am I popping?”

“Now shift to the left,” Diego said. “Pop your hip. Pop your back.”

“ _Why are we doing this_ ,” said Five.

Diego laughed. “Because I’m tired of being the only person in this family who can dance. Pop your hip. Pop your back.”

“This is not dancing,” said Five. “This is the decline of civilization as we know it.”

“Technically flossing is dancing, like it or not. Also, you are such a grandpa,” said Klaus, watching from the sofa.

Five scowled at him. “You interrupted me from my work for this?”

“You were on a coffee break,” Diego said. “Doesn’t count.”

“Also, you’re not the only person in this family who can dance,” Klaus continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “Have you ever seen Vanya dance? Magnificent! The grace of a gazelle!”

“Yeah, for a second I thought you were going to say yourself, and we were going to have to redefine some terms,” Diego said. “Like _dance_. Or _decline of civilization as we know it_.”

“I’m a great dancer,” said Klaus.

“Dude, I’m not even sure I would call what you do _dancing_ , much less say you’re great at it,” said Diego.

Klaus squawked indignantly. “Monster! Heathen! Charlatan! Benedict Arnold!”

“You already called me that when I said white people shouldn’t wear black eyeliner,” Diego said.

“You said _what_?” Klaus said.

“I didn’t come up with that, Eudora said it first,” Diego sighed. “I just happen to agree.”

“Traitor! Swindler! Philistine! _Benedict Arnold_ ,” said Klaus, throwing pillows at him.

“Christ,” Diego said, batting away the pillows. “Five, would –” He looked around. When had Five left?

“You sicken me,” Klaus announced.

“Who sickens you?” Ben asked, wandering by.

“ _Diego_ ,” said Klaus, darkly.

*

“Diego,” said Klaus, quietly.

Diego ignored him, so focused on his actions that sweat was dripping from the tips of his hair.

“What are you…?” Klaus eased open the door, coming inside, light on the balls of his feet.

“Shut up,” Diego gritted out. “I need to concentrate.”

Klaus, uncharacteristically, stayed quiet, crouching in front of him and watching with his lip caught between his teeth.

Diego made the last cut and then set aside the knife. As soon as he put it down, his hand started shaking violently, all that laser focus breaking at once. He reached for the glass of water to wet his dry throat, but the trembling of his body fumbled it in his grasp, spilling the contents on the floor.

“Diego,” Klaus said, turning his face to him. His expression was serious. “Talk to me.”

“Jesus, chill,” Diego said, abruptly annoyed. “I’ve thought about getting tattoos, but you know the whole… needle thing.”

Klaus nodded.

“So then I thought, why not skip the middleman entirely?” Diego pressed a warm, wet towel to the bleeding cuts on his chest. “It’s just another form of body modification. You of all people, man.” He turned Klaus’s hands over and traced his palms.

“I guess,” Klaus said, looking down at the towel as it slowly darkened with blood.

“It’s called scarification, it’s a real thing,” Diego said defensively. “I didn’t invent this as some form of masochistic self-mutilation.”

“You didn’t invent it, that’s true,” Klaus said.

Diego flipped him off.

“What did you…?” Klaus gently peeled away the towel, slowing down when Diego hissed through his teeth. “A domino mask? You’re such a cliché.”

“S’not a domino mask,” Diego said.

Klaus looked up at him.

“A star, for Luther,” Diego said, pointing at a different shape. “An –”

“Octopus for Ben,” Klaus said, laughing. “A pair of lips for… Allison?”

Diego nodded. “A violin for Vanya, and a tie for Five.”

“I don’t get it,” Klaus said. “Do I not get one, or is the domino mask for me? I mean, I guess I’m grateful you didn’t draw a ghost, but –”

“It’s not a domino mask,” Diego said again, patiently. “It’s a raccoon mask.”

Klaus’s jaw dropped.

“You’re cute when you’re overwhelmed,” murmured Diego, closing his eyes.

“You’ve picked a real opportune time to die of blood loss,” Klaus said, voice shaking.

“Shut up,” Diego said. “I could totally get it up.”

Klaus snorted.

“…Maybe go get me some Gatorade,” Diego admitted.

*

Diego had barely bothered taking the time to pass along the obligatory mnemonic to Five before he corralled Klaus in the hallway.

“Whoa!” Klaus said, when Diego got a hand on his collar. “Me and Ben were gonna –”

“Fuck me instead,” Diego said, latching his mouth onto Klaus’s neck.

Klaus gave a disbelieving, shaky laugh. “What, here in the hallway?”

“Maybe,” Diego said, shoving up Klaus’s shirt and running his hands over his chest.

“Christ, Diego, I – what happened to all the _we’re brothers_ shit?” Klaus squirmed, his head knocking back against the wall when Diego twisted his nipple. “Diego.”

“It doesn’t matter, Klaus,” Diego said, tightly. “Don’t you get that? None of this fucking matters.”

Klaus didn’t say anything, but he pushed on Diego’s shoulder, at first soft and then insistent, putting some distance between them. Klaus looked at his face for a long moment. Diego just looked back, impatient.

“Are you alright?” Klaus said finally, with a damnable pity in his voice.

Diego rolled his eyes and shoved away. “Never mind, I’ll find something else. I’m just bored.”

“Wait, Diego –”

Diego paused as Klaus’s hand came down on his arm, looking down at it. A thought came to him suddenly. “Hey,” he said, turning back. “Want to shoot up with me?”

Klaus recoiled.

Was this what Klaus had felt like, all those years? Unsettled in his own skin, yearning for something unattainable, wanting peace he couldn’t find? Every day another cycle of ennui and mounting indifference? No wonder he preferred the pleasure of oblivion.

“It’s not going to matter tomorrow, that’s what you’ve been telling me this whole time,” Diego said. “Every fucking loop, that’s what you tell me. I’ve never done anything worse than weed – let’s do it. Hit me up.” He tapped on the inside of his elbow with two fingers.

“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Klaus said slowly.

“You’re not even going to remember when it resets, it’s not like I’m ruining your big sobriety push,” Diego said, rolling his eyes.

“I won’t, but you will,” Klaus said.

Diego froze for a moment. Then his lip curled. “You think I’m going to get addicted, is that right?”

“I think either you hate it and there’s no point in doing it, or you like it, and…”

“It’s one day,” Diego said. “You can’t build up an addiction in one day.”

“The addiction isn’t only physical,” Klaus said quietly.

“Is that what they tell you pillheads in rehab?” Diego said, putting his hand to the side of Klaus’s head and leaning in.

Klaus inhaled, thin and slow. “I’m not shooting up with you, Diego.”

“You came onto me the first time,” Diego said. “You didn’t seem to mind that I’d remember _that_ in the morning.”

Klaus flinched, and Diego knew he’d struck a nerve. “It’s different,” he said, though he couldn’t seem to say how.

“I don’t need your protection,” Diego said, annoyed. “If I want to get high –”

“Then I can’t stop you,” Klaus said evenly. “But I’m not going to help you with it.”

“Yeah, this time,” Diego said, smirking. “We’ll see what you say tomorrow.”

Klaus dropped his gaze.

*

It was laughably easy to get heroin. All Diego had to do was walk the streets where he’d tailed Klaus in the past until he found someone he recognized, then say he was Klaus’s brother and bam, the bag was in his hand.

He brought it back to the Academy, still a little gun-shy about using it on the street, and put it on his desk. He didn’t know anything about cooking it, so he figured he’d just go for the easiest method and do it the way he’d seen Klaus snort coke – cut it with a credit card, line it up, snort it through a rolled dollar bill. He got as far as the dollar bill step, then he made the mistake of thinking about Eudora.

Diego sat on the edge of his bed, leaning forward with his weight on his elbows, and looked at the line of white powder on his desk.

One time, a girl had been brought into the holding cell, maybe 16, shivering as she came down from whatever high she’d been under. She was a beautiful girl, with gorgeous dark ringlets of hair and big eyes. She looked like she would have been athletic if she weren’t so skinny.

Diego had always been fairly immune to the junkies, their traumas and their sob stories, because of Klaus and because of all of the innocent lives that he’d seen ended too young, people who didn’t make the choice themselves.

That girl, though. She’d stuck with him because of the way she’d affected Eudora. He’d never seen her so _sad_.

Diego gave a choked sound and swept his hand through the powder, brushing it off the desk, most of it sticking in the grooves of his hand. He sat down on the floor, and didn’t move for hours.

*

The next day, Diego didn’t say anything. He let them talk, let Reginald bring them inside, let Five stand up to him and let himself be towed to Five’s room for the same plan he’d seen fail before.

Then, once he could get away, he went back to his room and slept for a long time.

He woke up sometime later. It was dark outside, and for a long moment he couldn’t remember where he was or how he’d gotten there. Even when realization struck, he just stayed lying there, eyes open, staring at the wall until his eyes had adjusted to the light and he could make out the marks his knives had left over years of practicing.

He’d lost track of time again, not quite asleep or awake, when the door creaked open. He amused himself trying to guess which sibling it was. Klaus? Vanya? Allison?

“You awake?”

Only because it was _Luther_ , of all people, did Diego sit up. “Yeah,” he said, grinding his palms into his eyes. “Allison send you?”

“Actually, she said I should let you sleep, but… it’s been ten hours. I think you’ve slept enough.” Luther had his arms crossed. He probably meant to sound stern, but Diego thought he detected the concern underlying it.

“Ten hours? Christ,” Diego said.

“Time jump must have taken it out of you,” said Luther. “Five says it might have different effects on everyone. I’m weirdly itchy.” He clearly waited for Diego to make a crack about his gorilla grooming habits, but Diego just shrugged.

“Must be it,” he said.

Luther shifted in visible discomfort at having to do the heavy lifting in this conversation. “Do you want dinner? Mom saved you a plate.”

Diego opened his mouth to say something equally benign, and what came out was, “Four years on the moon, and _nothing_?”

Luther stiffened.

“You woke up every day and, like, looked at rocks or whatever, and all of it was for jack shit,” Diego said. “How’d you do it, man?” Four years of interminable sameness, of waking up every day to the same exact view that had been there when he went to sleep, unchanged. The parallel was not lost on Diego.

“I didn’t know at the time it was for jack shit,” Luther said. “I thought I was fulfilling a purpose.”

Diego rubbed his eyes. That was the key, wasn’t it? Knowing that you were contributing to something, that you were _achieving_ something by waking up every day.

This Groundhogs Day thing wasn’t funny anymore. “Right,” Diego said.

Luther hesitated, then sat down on the foot of Diego’s bed, making the whole thing creak dangerously. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Why, because one weak link brings down the whole team?” Diego said, annoyed at the tone of demand. “Because that’s what leaders do?”

“Because you’re freaking me out,” Luther said. “I’ve never seen you like this before.”

“I’m just tired,” Diego said, turning his face away.

“Is that really it?”

Diego hesitated, but… what was the point? Luther wouldn’t remember it anyway. This whole conversation was dust in the fucking wind. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s it.”

Luther frowned, but all he said was, “If you’re sure.”

Diego smiled, a little.

*

The next day, he told them again and set Five working on his calculations. Then he walked back to his bedroom, hands in his pockets. He got halfway there when he bumped into Ben.

“Hey,” said Ben. “Wanna go to Starbucks?”

Diego blinked.

“Klaus loves those damn green tea Frappuccinos and I’ve always wanted to try one,” Ben said. “I figured you could hot-wire the car for us.”

Diego looked at him warily. “Why today?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve never asked any other day,” Diego said. “So why today?”

Ben shrugged. “You look tired. I thought you could use some coffee. Got me thinking about Frappuccinos, now I want one. Nothing more to it than that.”

Diego took this in. Then he said, “Yeah, alright.”

 

“You seem off,” Ben said, when they’d acquired some 1400 calories worth of blended sugar drinks at Starbucks. “Wanna talk?” He kicked his feet out the window, crossing his ankles over the side mirror of the sedan Diego had jacked.

“I don’t know, I’m just tired,” Diego said. “Five said I should think of it as a vacation, but…” He sipped his Frappuccino and stared ahead, foot easing up on the gas pedal as they hit traffic.

“I bet I know what you mean,” Ben said.

Diego glanced over.

“I spent twelve years as a ghost,” Ben said. “Watching everything happen around me without being able to change it. Seeing other people going through the motions and just… drifting. I know it’s not exactly the same, but it’s probably close.”

Diego hadn’t thought about it that way. “Man, I should have tried to talk to you instead of Luther.”

Ben laughed. “You tried to talk to Luther? Yeah, I bet that went well. He’s so, uh, philosophical. Complex.”

“Such a cognitive wunderkind,” Diego drawled. “Brains and beauty.”

“And big gorilla dick,” said Ben.

Diego nearly spat Frappuccino all over the dashboard. “Jesus!”

“I guess not at the moment,” Ben granted. “But once we go back, everything will be right back to normal, gorilla balls and all.”

His voice had lost all joviality by the end of the sentence, and Diego realized something he should have thought of before. “Hey,” he said, uncomfortably.

“You just got there?” Ben said, looking away out the window.

When they went back to the future… When they went back, Ben wasn’t coming with them. He’d never made it to 2019, and this little jaunt to the past wouldn’t change that.

“Shit,” Diego said, “no _wonder_ you haven’t wanted to help Five this whole time.”

“I know it has to happen,” said Ben quietly, “but I’m just selfish enough not to speed up the process.”

“It’s not selfish not to want to die,” Diego said.

“I wish I’d known that when I was actually 18,” said Ben, even quieter.

Diego slammed on the breaks, pulling over to the shoulder. He realized he was shaking violently.

Well, _that_ had cracked his ennui. Fuck.

“Ben…”

“You don’t have to say anything,” said Ben, smiling sadly at him. “I know this is temporary. I’m sure every reset, I know it’s temporary. This is the closest thing to living again I’m going to get.”

“And you don’t even remember it day to day,” Diego said, pained. _Agonized_. And he was whining about feeling unfulfilled, when Ben spent every day knowing it would be his last before the eternal darkness swallowed him again.

“Yeah,” said Ben. “I know.”

Diego sat there, trying to bite back the sting of tears, for a long time. To his credit, Ben’s eyes were dry, and he maintained that small smile the whole way home.

 

“What the fuck,” Five said, when Diego slammed open the door and whipped a knife through the air so it whistled past his head. He turned, one eyebrow raised. “Must you do that?”

“Why didn’t you say anything about Ben?” Diego said.

“What about Ben?”

“About the fact that he’s going to die again – be dead again – when we go back,” Diego said. “Every single day, you must have known that, and you never said anything to me.”

Five snorted. “You didn’t realize? Exactly how dumb are you?”

“Don’t fuck with me, Five,” Diego growled.

Five looked back to the wall. “What do you think is taking so long in my calculations?”

Diego hesitated, thrown.

“It’s hard enough to factor in quantum projection for the six of us, but incorporating a deceased entity? Virtually impossible,” Five said. “There’s a non-significant chance even if I do get it right, he’ll arrive as an 18-year-old, but I don’t figure he’ll mind as much as I have.”

“You’ve already lived it once,” Diego said. “He hasn’t.”

“Right,” said Five. “Anyway, if I manage to discover how to bring in the quantum state versions of him that exist beyond the point when he died in his own timeline, that should do it.”

“If you say the world _multi-verse,_ my head will explode,” Diego gritted out.

Five smirked at him. “How _is_ your study of metaphysics going, anyway?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Diego said. “So you think…?”

“I haven’t said anything to either of you because I don’t want to get your hopes up if I can’t figure it out,” Five said, very seriously.

Five was, and had always been, an enigma to Diego. How anyone could be simultaneously so ruthlessly practical and so passionately empathetic – he cared so much and covered it so well. Diego knew without having to hear it that on the scales of Five’s mental consideration, their family weighed the same amount as the fate of the rest of the world, eternally balanced on either side.

“Well, no pressure, but I’ve got my hopes up now,” Diego said. “So that happened.”

Five quirked his lips. “To tell you the truth, you seemed a little… edgy when you told me this morning. I thought you might be running out of patience with me.”

Unable to lie, Diego winced. “Not… with you. Just with not having anything stick, day to day. It’s gotten old.”

“I understand that,” Five said. “I think I’m getting closer to the solution, so just hang on a little longer.”

“As long as it takes,” Diego said, thinking of Ben.

*

The next day, he went back to Klaus’s room, where Klaus and Ben were lying on the bed with their feet propped up on the wall. They looked up at him upside-down.

“Can I talk to you?” he asked Klaus.

“Sure,” Klaus said. “He’s about to go out on a sashimi date with Allison and Vanya. What is sashimi, anyway?”

“Raw fish, he doesn’t want it,” Diego said.

“Good to know,” said Ben. He hopped off the bed, waving at them both as he left.

Klaus sat up as well. “You want to talk to me? Why, Diego, whatever about?”

“How long have you had feelings for me?” Diego said.

Klaus blanched.

“I think you’ve thought about this before,” Diego said, drawing over. “I mean, I know you’ve thought about fucking me, but I think you’ve thought about _being_ with me too. Every cycle, you jump at the chance to screw me. I’ve heard all your lines now.”

“Are they good lines, at least?” Klaus asked with an attempt at his normal irreverence.

Ignoring this, Diego said, “But I think you do it because this is the first time rejection won’t hurt – because it won’t last. You’re taking advantage of the opportunity to risk everything because there _isn’t_ any risk. But if this were a normal day, you’d never say anything because you couldn’t handle if I said no.”

“Diego,” Klaus said, very soft. Diego knew he could break him, if he wanted to.

“How long have you wanted it?” Diego asked, just as soft. “Have I been missing it this whole time?”

“Yes,” Klaus said.

Diego grimaced.

“You always had your own priorities, you’ve been focused on a hundred million other things,” Klaus said. “And you wouldn’t have wanted to be with a junkie – don’t lie, we both know it,” he added. He didn’t sound accusatory, but his tone didn’t brook room for argument.

“I wasn’t going to deny it,” Diego said.

“Well, I wouldn’t have changed for you, not before,” Klaus said frankly. “I wanted you, but I wanted the drugs more.”

Diego shrugged. He couldn’t blame Klaus for that.

“And then, like, how much time have we actually spent together in the last 12 years? Then there was Dave, and – it’s been a lot,” Klaus said.

“But you’ve always wanted me?” Diego said.

Klaus sighed. “But I’ve always wanted you,” he murmured. He opened his mouth, pausing like he might say something meaningful, then he just smiled, that wicked curl of the lips. “I mean. You’ve seen that ass in the mirror, right? Damn, son.”

Diego snorted. “Good talk.”

“Wait!” Klaus said, scrambling out of the bed, as if Diego had started to leave, which he hadn’t. “Just – I mean, I’m a simulation, right? There’s no risk for you either, so… Just tell me, what’s the prognosis, doc? Do I have a shot?”

“Yeah, dumbass, I’ve fucked you in front of our Dad, I’d say you have a shot,” Diego said, rolling his eyes.

“Ew, what?” Klaus said, sounding enchanted. “ _Why_?”

Diego shrugged. “He walked in, I didn’t stop. No regrets. Anyway, we’ll talk.” He patted Klaus’s arm. “Stay tuned.”

“Can you make it a big romantic gesture?” Klaus said, clapping his hands. “I love big romantic gestures.”

“Man, you don’t care at all about protecting future-Klaus’s secrets, do you?” Diego said, amused. “Sure. Big romantic gesture.” He hesitated. He had never been good at romantic gestures, as Eudora had told him more than once. “Like what?”

“I’m glad you asked,” Klaus said with a beaming smile. “Let’s brainstorm.”

Diego groaned.

“You’re welcome, future-Klaus!” Klaus said, flashing two thumbs up.


	4. Chapter 4

Diego was juggling oranges and walking from the kitchen to his bedroom one morning when something gave him pause.

He touched his hand to the wooden door of Reginald’s office, trying to bring back the feeling the sight of it had inspired in him as a child – to remember why he’d felt so much of a draw towards the man who had done little to earn it. He hated Reginald, and that wasn’t a lie. Why had he felt such a drive to impress him?

That little kernel of neediness that Reginald had planted inside him – when would Diego be able to dig it out? How long was long enough?

Almost without realizing it, he was reaching for the doorknob. Locked, of course, because Reginald always hid in his office on the days that Five yelled at him. Diego rolled his head on his neck a few times, making it crack.

Then he bashed his booted foot into the door, right over the lock. It took three goes before the lock splintered inwards and the door fell open, hanging off the lower hinge.

Diego stepped inside over the wreckage of the door. “Don’t get up,” he said, pointing at Reginald with a knife as he started to rise. “We’re gonna have a little talk.”

“Really, Number Two?” said Reginald with impressive calm, but Diego knew after this many days that there was an insecurity in him that blew all of theirs out of the water. “Are the dramatics necessary?”

“Says the man who dressed us up in matching school uniforms and domino masks,” Diego said. “Which, you know, I never got – what’s the point of the masks when the whole damn world knew who we were the whole time? For the aesthetic?”

“If you don’t understand the point of the uniform after this long, you are beyond my ability to teach,” Reginald said.

“I mean, I still wear the mask when I’m out cracking skulls, so I’m not above it all by any means,” said Diego. “And I’ve fucked Klaus in just the socks, so I have a healthy appreciate for the uniform, don’t get me wrong.”

Reginald blanched.

“Five got to you this morning, right? Told you how we all left you, one by one – you drove off Five, you killed Ben, and I don’t know how long after I left it took everyone else to follow.” Diego dropped into the chair across from Reginald’s desk, propping his feet up on the mahogany surface.

“If we are to speak, we will do it as civilized men,” Reginald said, head high with dignity.

“Ouk esti leousi kai andrasin orkia pista,” Diego said.

Reginald stared at him.

“Aw, Reggie, you don’t recognize the line? You’re a disappointment to the family,” Diego said, clicking his tongue. “The Iliad. Book 22. Achilles to Hector.”

“There are no pacts between lions and men,” said Reginald, and there was a tremor in his voice that Diego _relished_.

“So you’re wondering, right? Which one of us is the lion, and which is the man?” Diego said. He grinned, toothily. “I’ll let you come to your own conclusions.”

“Are you trying to make a point, Number Two?” Reginald said. “I assure you, your histrionics are noted.”

“You ruined my life,” Diego said, no longer smiling. “You ruined _all_ our lives. You bought a bunch of shiny machinery that you didn’t know how to use, and you broke it so that no one else could.”

Reginald sighed, put-upon. “What do you expect me to say?”

Diego stopped.

What did he expect Reginald to say? The hundreds of times he’d scripted this speech in his head, how had he expected it to be received? Had he expected an apology? Hardly. Had he wanted the argument? Perhaps.

What did he think he was going to get, walking in here? Absolution?

“I thought I knew what I wanted,” Diego said, slowly. “But there’s nothing I can say to you that will fix my childhood, and there’s nothing that will make you happy with the version of me you got relative to the one you wanted.”

“You were hardly my biggest disappointment,” Reginald said.

Diego half-smiled. “Is that supposed to be a compliment? Or are you telling me that you never had any expectations for me to disappoint?” He raised a hand. “Don’t answer that. It doesn’t matter.”

“But it does,” said Reginald.

It did, Diego knew. He hated it, but it was true. “But it shouldn’t. That’s the part I need to accept, I think." He took a deep breath, letting it swell in his lungs. "And you know what, you sadistic old fuck?”

Reginald didn't respond. Didn't even bother looking at him.

Diego stood up. “I’m _going_ to.”

Diego was going to reach his peace with his place in life, someday. One last _fuck you_ to Reginald.

Reginald didn’t say anything when he left, just let him go and turned back to his desk.

It still bothered Diego, but less than it would have, before.

 

That same day, he corralled his siblings – even Five – and dragged them to the beach, even though they had to drive some three hours to get there in their stolen van.

Klaus called shotgun, so the rest of them packed, grumbling, into the back. Diego lost track of their nonsense at some point, but when he checked the rearview he found them all eating Sour Patch Kids and watching while Vanya and Allison played some hand game that involved a lot of slapping, and he smiled.

“You look happy,” Klaus commented, bare feet braced against the front window, leaving prints.

“I think I’m in the final act of the movie when I’ve actually figured my shit out,” Diego said.

“Oh?” said Klaus. “Did Bill Murray get the girl?”

Diego inclined his head. “Among other things.”

“Wait, what?” Klaus sat up, making sure to pitch his voice low to keep the rest from taking notice. “Who? Cop lady?”

“Jealousy doesn’t become you,” Diego said.

“Everything becomes me, I’m eminently becomable,” said Klaus, because he always babbled when he was flustered. “Anyway, why would I be –”

Diego reached over, settling his hand on Klaus’s thigh and leaving it there.

Klaus inhaled a sharp breath and fell silent. After a long moment, he set his own hand over Diego’s.

His hair was whipping around in the wind from the open window, but that kind of artful dishevelment had only ever been lovely on him. His tank top was slipping off one shoulder and his pants were riding low so the sharp cuts of his hip bones showed, and all together there was a lot of bare skin on display.

What Diego could see of Klaus’s expression behind his sunglasses was warm and happy, corroborated when he started humming along with the music. His lips were worn from chewing on them. Even at 18 he’d looked like some kind of elfin royalty, a fairy tale prince from a faraway land.

And of all the boys in the world, Diego was the one he picked, for romantic gestures and dirty sex and whatever else he wanted.

They passed the rest of the drive that way.

 

He wasn’t sure if his siblings caught on by the time they got to the beach, but they were brought up to speed pretty fast when he tripped Klaus onto the sand and followed him down, rolling with him a few times until Diego bent in to kiss him and they stilled. Klaus twined his fingers in Diego’s hair and sank into it, opening up underneath him like a fucking flower in bloom.

“Oh, what the fuck,” said Luther.

“Yikes,” said Vanya, stepping around them.

“Is that why you took us to the beach?” Allison said, amused. “You could have just brought Klaus, we don’t need to bear witness to your wooing effort.”

Diego broke off the kiss and looked up. “I wanted you all here.”

“Hopefully not for the same activities,” Ben said dryly, spraying a water bottle on them.

Diego yelped and jerked, and Klaus giggled underneath him.

“Have you done this every cycle?” said Allison, offering Diego a hand up.

Diego pulled off his shirt and mopped up his wet hair with it, pretending not to notice the heated look Klaus shot at his chest. Never got old. “Which part of it? The beach? Nah.”

“Klaus,” said Allison.

“Oh,” Diego said. “Not… all of them, no.”

Klaus, pleased, ran a hand up his spine, lingering on the topmost vertebra.

“Yeah, whatever, lovebirds,” Allison said, shooting him a knowing look and then running to catch up with the others.

“Bill Murray _totally_ got the girl,” Klaus said.

“And I haven’t even whipped out my romantic gestures yet,” Diego said, walking ahead.

Klaus followed. “There’s _romantic gestures_?” he said, delighted.

 

Later, once they’d tired themselves out in the water and stretched out to dry, Klaus propped himself up on his elbow and looked Diego over. “You’re so pretty in the light,” he commented. “You’re pretty at night, too, in a kind of ethereal way, but you’re extra pretty in the sunlight.”

“Please stop using that word to describe me,” said Diego.

“No, shan’t,” Klaus said, laughing. “What would you prefer? Dashing? Handsome? Pulchritudinous?”

“Yes.”

“Fine,” Klaus said. “You’re extra pulchritudinous in the sunlight.”

“Better,” said Diego.

Klaus sat up to drink from his iced tea, and Diego moved over when he did, resting his head on Klaus’s thighs. He hissed at the shock of cold water, but didn’t move away. “Do you think you’d be happier without your powers?” Klaus asked, combing his fingers through Diego’s wet hair.

Diego thought about this. Klaus did this sometimes, just went right for the conversational jugular.

“I think if I’d been powerless from the start I would be happier,” he said slowly. “But I’ve had them for so long I’ve learned… vanity from it. I’d feel like I was missing something if they were gone.”

“Yeah. That makes sense.”

“What about you?” Diego said, like he didn’t know.

Klaus widened his eyes dramatically. “Fuck me, do you need to ask? Take away the ghosts. I’ll throw in my spleen too, if that’s what it takes to cut the deal. Want a kidney? A lung?”

“Point taken,” Diego said, looking up into the blue sky.

Klaus was quiet for a moment. “But like you say, there’s a certain vanity to it,” he said, finally. “I don’t know who I am without it. I’ve never had to question that I am truly special because of – I wonder if I’d like myself less if I didn’t have them.”

Diego touched his cheek.

“God, what a dumb thing to whine about,” Klaus said, laughing a little. “I’m too quirky and it sucks! Please god, I just want to be normal – I’m like Edward fucking Cullen here, whining about my sparkly vampire skin in a world full of lumpy humans.”

“I know what you mean,” Diego said.

“I know you do,” Klaus said, smiling down at him. “O’ mighty and fearsome Kraken, I know.”

 

Five was strangely quiet all day, but he was a strange, quiet boy and Diego didn’t think much of it until they were pulling back into the alley behind the Academy and Five cleared his throat.

“I had a breakthrough at the beach,” he said. “I’m ready to take us home.”

Diego’s foot slipped, plowing the van into the dumpster. The hood crunched and billowing smoke poured out of it – fortunately it was too old a model to have airbags, or Diego and Klaus would have been left nursing broken noses.

In the silence that followed, Allison sighed. “You couldn’t have waited until we were parked?”

“Pardon me for thinking Diego could drive,” Five muttered.

“You’re ready?” Diego said, turning in his seat to look back at Five. “ _Now_?”

“Maybe I’ve been too close, I haven’t had enough distance,” Five said, as if to himself. “But yes, I found the missing link and now I’m ready.”

Diego met Ben’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “You’re _ready_?” he said meaningfully.

“I’m ready,” said Five in the same tone.

“Well, shit, what are we waiting for?” Luther said, leaning forward in his seat. “Let’s do it!”

“I want Diego’s go-ahead first,” said Five. “Is today the day you want to keep?”

Was today –

He’d stopped thinking in terms of accountability some hundreds of cycles before. Nothing lasted, so nothing mattered. Was today the day he wanted to preserve? The day he’d talked to Reginald, the day they’d gone to the beach, the day he’d unceremoniously groped Klaus in a van instead of the _romantic gesture_ they’d planned?

If he’d really thought about it, would he do anything differently?

“Yeah, um,” he said, a little dazed. “Today’s good. Let’s do it. Just one thing I want to say.” He looked around at all of them. “Two things,” he realized.

They looked back at him curiously.

“Vanya,” Diego said.

She jerked, looking at him with wide eyes.

“I’ve lived this day some 500 times, and some fucking weird shit has happened. I could tell you some stories.”

“Please tell us some stories,” said Klaus, captivated.

Ignoring him, Diego continued, “Reginald’s said some shit, we’ve gotten in some arguments, you once called Luther a _sycophantic mutant half-wit –_ ”

Five fist-bumped her.

“And you know how many people you’ve killed?”

She winced.

“Zero,” Diego said. “No matter what shit we gave you – once, Five told me to deliberately push you to test your control –”

“Five,” said Luther sternly.

“It’s a simulation, it’s the perfect controlled lab experiment,” Five said.

“– and angel-babe, you didn’t crack a glass. Sure, the whole house shook, but whatever, that’s nothing. I want you to know that, okay? I’m not lying here.” Diego looked at her seriously. “If the apocalypse does happen again, it’s not going to be from you.”

“Thank you,” Vanya whispered.

Allison took her hand, squeezing it, and Vanya squeezed back.

Diego smiled, then he looked at Ben. “Man,” he said. “Having you back has been…” His throat clenched up slightly, and he looked at Five, wishing that he could say –

But Five shook his head, just slightly.

“Never mind,” Diego said. “It’s been good.”

“Thanks,” Ben said, smiling sadly at him.

Then, “No, fuck that,” Diego decided. “Ben, Five thinks he can get you back to the future with us.”

“ _Really_ , Diego?” said Five, baring his teeth at him.

“What? If he doesn’t make it, he’s not going to hold it against you,” Diego said. “And these idiots didn’t even consider the idea of him not making it back, so you’re hardly getting their hopes up any higher than they already are.” He gestured around at the rest of their siblings, conveniently ignoring that he’d been one of those idiots until Ben had said something.

“I’m not going to… hold it against you,” said Ben weakly, looking a little like he might pass out.

“You thought you weren’t coming back with us?” Klaus said. “And you weren’t going to say anything?”

“What was the point?” Ben said. “I’m not going to prevent what needs to happen from happening.”

“But –”

“It doesn’t matter. Five’s bringing us all back. I trust him,” Diego said.

“I’ve messed up the calculations before,” Five said stubbornly, gesturing down at his preteen body. “Exhibit A.” He waved around at the rest of them. “And Exhibit B!”

“Five,” Diego said. “I’ve seen you working on this for literal years. You’re bringing us back.”

Five dug both hands into his hair and leaned forward in his seat. “I’m going to double-check my calculations one more time,” he said, and vanished from sight in a ripple.

There was a beat of silence.

Diego sighed. “Let me –”

“No. I’ll go after him,” Ben said, climbing out of the car.

Diego frowned.

“Ben, are you sure?” Allison said carefully.

Ben flashed a sardonic smile and walked away.

“He does that sometimes,” said Klaus.

 

Diego walked with Klaus back into the house. They passed by Reginald’s broken door, and Klaus looked curiously at him. “Was that you?”

“What? Yeah,” Diego said, though that felt like eons ago. “It was a thing, I guess.”

“Have a good chat with Reggie?”

“No, but I’ve realized there’s no possible conversation that would satisfy whatever I want from him, so. Whatever,” Diego said.

Klaus winced. “Yeah,” he said, wrapping his hand around Diego’s elbow like a lady being escorted to a ball. “I had that realization once. Old Reg is a much better with a straight razor than he is with emotional heart to hearts.”

Diego shot him a curious look, and Klaus waved it off. “So no regrets, then?” Klaus said lightly.

“About what?”

“About…” Klaus gestured back and forth between them. “I know you didn’t go into today thinking it would be _the one_.”

Oh. Klaus, being Klaus, _would_ worry that Diego hadn’t meant this to be a real thing, had just been using him as a convenient sex toy for a day he hadn’t known would stick. Klaus, being Klaus, wouldn’t realize that was an absolutely insane idea.

“You’re right, this wasn’t exactly my plan,” Diego said.

Klaus shrugged broadly – always grander, looser with his motions when he was vulnerable. “I won’t hold it against you. I know I cut a striking figure, you can hardly be expected to resist.”

“Pulchritudinous, even,” Diego said, backing him into his own room.

Klaus shot him an uncertain look.

“It wasn’t my plan, because like I said, there were romantic gestures,” Diego said. “I was going to get the raccoon mask tattoo I’ve been thinking about –”

Klaus gave a little squeaky noise.

“– and bake you a layered green tea cream cake – Mom taught me how, I’m good at it,” Diego said smugly.

Hands over his mouth, Klaus looked more overcome than he always did the first time Diego put his dick inside him. Diego decided to take this as a compliment.

“And then I was going to lay you out naked and massage you _stupid_ , I was going to work you over into a limp pancake, till you were drooling into the pillow,” said Diego, “and then I was gonna let you ride my dick like a goddamn Olympic equestrian.”

Klaus gave a shaky laugh. “I can’t believe that’s your idea of romance.”

“That last one is _your_ idea of romance, baby boy, I didn’t come up with it,” Diego said. “You said I should give you an opportunity to show off what you can do – with vocal appreciation, which, I’ll tell you, _I_ can do.”

“Big words, hot stuff,” Klaus said, coming in closer and running his hand up Diego’s arm. “Think you can follow through?”

“Oh, you think I’m that easy,” Diego said, grinning. “You think you can reverse psychology me into twerking on your dick like some kind of harlot.”

Klaus blinked at him for a puzzled second before he laughed, expression clearing. “Yeah, that sounds like something I would say.”

“Multiple times,” Diego agreed, tipping him onto his back on the bed.

 

He took Klaus apart slowly, and it was definitely cheating that he’d done this some hundred times before, but no one had ever pretended Diego played fair.

“Oh,” Klaus said, when Diego sucked his cock into his mouth and nursed it gently, just enough to make Klaus squirm but not enough to get him off.

“Oh!” Klaus said, when Diego nudged at the spot behind his balls with a lube-slick finger, hips jumping up and Diego moving effortlessly with it, opening his throat for Klaus’s cock without any difficulty.

“Oh, _god_ ,” Klaus said, when Diego spread one hand over his abdomen to keep him down and traced his fingers around his rim, teasing, warming him up, not giving him any satisfaction until he was circling his hips desperately and then pressing two fingers into him at once.

Klaus’s head snapped back and his legs spread seemingly unconsciously, a broken cry torn from his lips.

“I’m not going to tease,” Diego murmured, spreading and circling his fingers. “This one time, I’ll be nice to you.”

“Oh, how decent of you,” Klaus said, sounding wrecked already. “I suppose you expect me to be grateful?”

“I mean, you’re going to be praising god for my dick soon enough,” Diego said, shrugging and curling his fingers to make Klaus jolt.

“You are such a cocky piece of – _AH_ ,” Klaus said, hips bucking when Diego nipped at his inner thigh sharply with his teeth.

“Yeah?” Diego said, working his teeth and bringing the blood rushing to the surface. He wished he had his stubble – he would have loved to see Klaus’s thighs red and chafed from it. For future reference, he thought, sucking another bruise just below the first. “What was that, babe?”

“Piece of shit, you goddamn _menace_ , you beautiful fucker, I’m going to kill you, please fuck me,” Klaus managed, reaching down and grabbing Diego by the hair, dragging him forcibly up to kiss him.

Diego grinned and kissed him back, just as eager, fingers still spreading him open. “That’s –”

“If you say anything about mixed signals, I will dick-punch you,” Klaus said, glaring as fiercely as he was able.

Diego paused, startled, and then he smiled. Maybe Klaus hadn’t done this a hundred times, but he knew Diego better than anyone else in the world, he reminded himself. There was something really nice about being known like that.

“Not saying anything,” he said, and he reached for a condom. “Except, you ready to take this dick, doll-face?”

“You are insufferable,” Klaus said, but he was smiling as Diego rolled on the condom and positioned himself, reaching out with grasping hands to clutch at his shoulders and keep him close.

Diego pressed inside him. God, that sensation never got old, being enveloped in that hot, slick velvet, beautifully tight, perfect pressure. They both gave choked noises as he bottomed out.

“Ooh,” Klaus said breathily, clamping his thighs around Diego’s torso. “So this is nice.”

“I’ve heard you say that about a cup of coffee,” Diego grumbled. “I’m aiming for something a little more emphatic here.”

“You’re the one who said you were going to make me praise god for your dick,” Klaus said. “Sounds like a you problem.”

Diego narrowed his eyes and started to move, just the way he knew Klaus liked – long, hard strokes, punishing and deep, not giving him quite enough time to adjust so he could still feel the stretch.

Klaus gave a delightful little quiver and latched his heels into Diego’s back, but he still just watched him with a look of indulgent amusement, and none of the normal beautiful moans spilled from his lips.

“Are you –” Diego scowled. “Are you intentionally holding back?”

“What makes you say that?” Klaus said, but the hitch in his voice gave him away, the _jagoff_.

“Oh, bullshit,” Diego said, and redoubled his efforts, fisting his hands in the sheets by Klaus’s head and fucking him hard and deep, adding that undulating grind that never failed to make him lose it.

“Okay okay – okay,” Klaus said, tipping his head back and laughing through his moans, which was maybe the most beautiful sound in the world. “Diego, I won’t – I won’t, I swear, I’ll be good, I’ll be –”

“You’re always good for me, baby,” Diego murmured, and Klaus went _molten_ at that, eyes bright and mouth falling half-open.

“Oh,” he said, sounding drunken, though Diego knew he hadn’t touched a drop. “Diego, please, I need – need you –”

“You’ve got me, you’ve got all of me,” Diego said, burying his face in Klaus’s neck as he snapped his hips, bringing them both closer to a rapidly approaching release.

Klaus whined and dragged his head up, kissing him messily even as he lost his breath, desperate and needy and lovely as hell, as tempting the hundredth time they did this as he was the first. “Diego,” he gasped out, “I’m – please – I need –”

“I know, I know,” Diego said, mindlessly turned on himself, so close. “You can, you can come, wanna see you come, sweetheart.” He wrapped his hand around Klaus’s cock and stroked him once, twice, and then Klaus was coming with a strangled noise, heels digging bruisingly tight into Diego’s back.

“Good boy, you’re so good for me,” Diego said, and he came with Klaus watching him with glassy, worshipful affection, pumping his hips into him until he was empty and exhausted, collapsing over him and letting Klaus gather him up and kiss him sweetly.

“Diego,” Klaus said, stroking over his sweaty hair. “ _Diego_.”

 

Diego was sitting and watching Grace fold the laundry when someone cleared their throat in the doorway. He looked up.

“500 times? Really?” Allison said.

Diego shrugged. “I lost track.”

“So I guess you’re older than all of us, now.”

“Except Five,” Diego said. “Five, me, Klaus, then the rest of you.”

“Right,” Allison said. “Do you feel like it? Older?" She hesitated. "Wiser?”

Diego pondered this as he twirled a knife in his fingers. “Not really,” he said quietly. “Maybe if you guys remembered any of the conversations we’d had, but it’s hard to feel like you’ve developed when you start over from square one every day.” Because you couldn't develop in a vacuum, he'd learned. Your identity was formed through the relationships you had with others - in the good ways, the bad ways, and everything in between.

“So have the important conversations when we get back,” Allison said. She came over and sat down next to him. “What _are_ the important conversations, anyway?”

Diego considered this. “Vanya,” he said. “I gotta talk to Vanya about her book.”

“You finally read it?”

He nodded. “Five. I gotta thank him. He worked so fucking hard to get us back. I don’t think he gives himself enough credit for how much effort he puts into shit – he wants us to think it’s all easy, and I think he buys his own hype sometimes. But it’s not always easy, and he does it anyway.”

Allison nodded.

“Luther, he’s been good too, back when he was teaching me physics. So fucking _patient_ , I had no idea how patient he can really be.” Diego grinned. “Which honestly makes it even more satisfying how much I can rile him up.”

“You’re such a tool,” Allison said, but fondly.

Diego shrugged, not arguing it. “Ben, I mean, how many fucking conversations do I have to catch up on with Ben? 13 years worth, right? It can’t just be Klaus doing the heavy lifting anymore.”

“Yeah,” Allison said. “It’s not just you, all of us need to remember that.”

Diego nodded.

“And Klaus?”

Diego cleared his throat. “Klaus,” he said. “Yeah. I guess I need to learn how to say the words, for him.” Diego had always been better at physical affection. Dirty talk, that came easily too, and endearments. But sincere declarations of affection? Christ almighty, he would rather be waterboarded.

“If you hadn’t noticed, he’d not so great at sincerity either,” Allison said dryly. “Maybe you guys can just settle for being stunted together.”

“It’s been working for us so far,” Diego said, smiling.

Allison laughed a little. Then she said, soft and shy, “What about me?”

He looked at her.

“500 days, and you still don’t have anything to say to me?”

Diego thought hard about how to phrase this. Fuck, this was not his strong suit. “You were the only constant,” he said to his hands. “You’ve always been the emotional core of our family. Maybe I’ve… taken that for granted. Maybe I need to recognize how hard you work, too.”

He saw her approaching in his peripheral vision, but he didn’t brace himself in time for the brutally hard embrace she wrapped him in.

“You _did_ grow, you stunted, sentient block of protein powder,” she whispered to him. “I can’t wait to offload some of the emotional labor of this family onto you from now on.”

“Hey now, I didn’t say I was there yet,” he said, panicked, and she laughed.

 

“So, any last epiphanies before we go?” Five asked Diego as they all gathered in a circle.

Diego wasn’t sure what Ben had told him, but they both looked calmer when they had come downstairs, and Five had a new determination in the set of his jaw.

“Don’t think so,” Diego said. “I’ll keep you posted.”

“Obliged,” said Five. “Anyone else? I don’t care. Hands.”

They all held hands around in the circle.

“Oh my god, wait,” Klaus said.

Five looked at him.

“We should actually have a séance while we’re already here,” Klaus said. “Does anyone have anyone dead they want to talk to?”

“Oh my god, shut –” Luther started to say.

The pulsing, shimmering blue ball of light formed overhead.

Like the last time, Diego felt himself break down from the inside out, his atoms disintegrating and realigning. He was being taken apart at his very core – everything he is, was, ever would be, all crumbling to nothingness and then bonding back together. All he could think about was entropy, the statistical likelihood of them reforming in the correct order.

He thought he was yelling, but he couldn’t hear anything over the rush of blood in his ears.

*

They tumbled out of the portal and hit the ground in a heap.

“Holy shit,” said Vanya, sitting up.

Diego looked around – at Ben, 18 and wide-eyed and fresh-faced, though at least older-looking than the _still_ 13-year-old Five, who was never going to catch a break on this one. The rest of them all looked like themselves again.

“Just to check, everyone can see Ben, right?” Klaus said, raising his hand.

Diego started to laugh, staying there on his knees as his siblings picked themselves up around him. He tilted his head back and spread out his arms, letting the rain soak him through.

Klaus came up next to Diego and rested his hand on his shoulder. He smiled down at him.

Diego smiled back. “You are,” he told Five, “the undisputed _King_ of Time Travel.”

“I’ll be a fair and gracious ruler,” Five said, smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's a wrap on what i meant to be a relatively short fic! life is strange.
> 
> i'm currently procrastinating hard on my thesis, which means i'm very interested in taking prompts right now - any pairing that includes diego is fine by me. please come visit my tumblr and let me know if you have any ideas! but fyi i might not respond if you say it on anon, i don't want to engage in any public discourse about tua shipping, so please message me off-anon or don't be surprised if i don't respond publicly to an anon message. thanks!
> 
> achilleees.tumblr.com


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